dot hack Fork - Genesis
by EmeraldWand
Summary: In the year 2018, service of the World R:2 suddenly ends, leaving a number of players wondering what to do next. Desperate for a truly exciting gaming experience, Russians steal a copy of the entire game from CyberConnect and begin rebuilding R:1, but will they control The World or will The World control them?
1. 01

2018:02:18:09:15.

 _Tick tock,_ the clock wore on until the frightful execution. Such a trivial task had its monumental occurrences in the past, but could any of them compare to one that might change the world? Dare anyone, by a single wave of his hand, deem himself worthy to control the lives of other men? Dare he consider himself a god?

Dasomov stared blankly at his computer monitor. Three weeks. That was the time necessary to find and utilize a certain exploit of interest. Dasomov moved his mouse around the screen and made a few clicks. In a chat window, a couple comrades began chiming in their ready status. Dasomov typed in a brief reply in his native Russian: "Let's begin the caravan." He then brought a terminal window to the front of his screen and entered the command: "rucc2". In a moment, the terminal window began buzzing away with miscellaneous info that only the program's developer would understand. Then it moved on to some secretive details belonging to another programmer.

"base id='10B8be13777777oa732'

name rom='uchuu_komupurekusu' kj='宇宙コンプレックス'/name

owner user='0031120634592174333019' hash='_'Kumichi/owner

root override='TITANSHEAD'

packagerios-95:/backup/pk/00/00/root_ -list/package

port ontime='90-12-31' access=''80:85/port

/root

/base"

Dasomov briefly examined the details before copying the file path. He opened another terminal, typed in another command, pasted the file path, and hit Enter. A progress bar appeared in his terminal, accompanied by a gradually increasing percentage sign. The progress bar took a number of hours to finish, but when it finally had, Dasomov typed in his signature statement into the chatbox. He then proceeded to close various windows on his screen, shut down his VPS and his new millennium version of Tor, and turn off his computer. Tonight's work was done, and as long as a certain corporation a few hundred miles away didn't care - even though he suspected they might have noticed - his work from now on might keep him very busy for the next several months.

The phone rang. Slow as a caterpillar on a frozen windshield, Dasomov walked over to the phone and put it up to his ear. "Yo," he said, his voice like a drowning bear.

A chipper young voice sounded off on the other end. "Chapter Zero complete, and she's a real dinger!" it tauted in the sort of casual Russian used only among the snowy otaku.

"Did you read the history yet?" the older one retorted.

"I did alittle research - enough for bits and pieces, but I kept it relatively independent."

"Some of us would like an authentic-sounding story, you know."

"Oh it sounds official alright."

"That's not what I meant."

"Ah don't worry. You'll love it anyway. You can read it on my blog come Friday, after I work out the kinks and fix my spelling."

Dasomov sighed. "Very well."

"Ok, I'm out."

Dasomov heard a click and then hung up. He went to his refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of vodka. After eying it for a moment, he put it back in and pulled out the milk. Pouring himself a glass, he sat down on his humble but comfortable couch and leaned back. The real fun was just about to begin. And fun was always more so with friends.

On the walls were printed photographs of a half-dozen comrades, representative of how the digital era had come to dominate their lives as much as it had strengthened their friendships. Now and then, the exchanging of bits was deemed unsatisfactory, and a physical token substituted in its place for a more real expression of friendship. These tokens would find themselves located somewhere within line-of-sight of the photographs bearing their sender. Fat ones, small ones, novelties, crafts, mystery items - whatever they may be - they all bore some connection to a mutual memory once cherished and later forgotten.

Dasomov didn't have time to remember things his mind considered unimportant. He might treasure a trinket or two, but once the sun rose and a project idea planted itself in his grey matter, there was no stopping its roots from growing alongside the nerves that filled his body. All at once, his morning breakfast would end and he would race over to his computer and start punching away.

With the exception of the occasional reminder of loneliness, everything about the solitary life was quite natural to Dasomov. He lived alone on the fifth and final floor of an apartment complex in Saratov, overlooking the Volga. His apartment reflected the sufficiency of this lifestyle: It was small - no more than forty-five paces in perimeter - yet complete with kitchenette, living room, bedding area, and bath. There were only a couple of overhead lights throughout the house, along with a heater - all of which could be manually activated from the same box of switches protruding from the kitchenette wall.

But the solitary life did come with a price. Like any bachelor's apartment, this one suffered neglect. Cracks as long as ivy raced up from the doorsteps of mice to the crease between the shields of privacy and rain. The kitchenette counter-top was grease-stained like the workbench of a car mechanic. The carpet floor had been vacuumed recently but only in the wake of an infestation of creepy-crawly and crumb-crunching company. Ragged and stinky, the carpet could have been replaced by the hair of a dromedary without anyone noticing. The toilet was another matter entirely. Its waters would have better served as the home of a mudskipper than a guppy. Now and then, an artificial waterfall would wash away the muck so long as their wasn't a dam downstream.

Yet life went on, and the waters outside acted as a reminder of that. Each and every evening, when he had brought himself to the brink of exhaustion, Dasomov would go out onto the tiny, poster-sized platform that was his porch and gaze out at the river water. Tiny glittering lights from various urban structures would reflect off the water crests and into his weary eyes. The chill of the breeze would sweep under his hem of his jacket and bring a comfort to his cramped stomach muscles better than a massage with a lotion of aloes accompanied with a swig of rum. It was simple moments like these that added the cherry on top to the life of living alone.

A life alone was both pleasant and cheap for such a man as Dasomov. Without a girlfriend, a pet, or a mortgage, he had nothing to pester him for money and attention. The only occasional disturbance came annually when a couple of tourist agents would play loud music celebrating the anniversary of the restoration of the travel industry after Pluto's Kiss. Dasomov didn't mind. Their jobs had been affected tremendously; his had not. As a programmer, Dasomov had worked his way through the ins and outs of his business and managed to land himself several security contracts.

The world was acting in fear, and it needed security experts. Times had become scary ever since Pluto's Kiss - a worldwide catastrophe in 2005 brought about by a virus created by a 10-year-old boy in California. The disaster had left millions without power, without employment, and without hope. For safety, much of the globe had turned to ALTIMIT OS, a supposedly full-proof operating system that wouldn't suffer from the same hacking as other computers had. But this hope had proven misplaced, and by the year 2018, everyone was scrambling for something better. Who better to ask for help than a Russian who had been cracking away at this digital dialogue for most of his existence?

If there is one thing to be said about the technology of man it's that it can always be cracked. Dasomov knew this well. There wasn't a single piece of software that he couldn't dissect. No matter how promising a piece of code appeared to be, he always viewed it with the same level of skepticism as an Orthodox fanatic viewed the intermingling of his doctrines with foreign ecumenism. With the precision of a hound chasing a rabbit, he almost never failed to pinpoint some weakness in the code. The code he trusted most was simple. And in most cases, larger tasks could always be broken into simple tasks and simple code could be run to complete them. Nevertheless, there was a subconscious love of complexity and a fascination with architecting do-all devices that made simple solutions appear as trivial and boring as grass in a flower bed. And thus, Dasomov would grow his grasses and unite them with a super script that would put the fear of God back into Bruce Schneier.

Two such scripts were designed for tonight's escapades. They were carefully crafted to employ a dozen other cracker apps, micro-manage a couple network connections, and siphon several gigabytes of data from servers in Japan to equally adept hardware in Moscow - all without their origin being detected.

Over the coming weeks, Dasomov would gradually fall into a routine involving of a couple meals, a dedicated work period, and an evening of analyzing line after line of the source code he had just ripped. Dasomov would have preferred this routine end upon the examination of the last line of code, but this was the sort of project where testing needed to begin almost immediately. A small band of other Russians were also involved in this project, and neither he nor they could withhold themselves from the excitement of toying with what was now in their possession: the world's greatest game, _The World_.


	2. 02

It was a chilly morning, the kind where you would wipe the tears from your eyes with an ice scraper and the groundhog could still see his shadow. Five or six stumpy icicles clung to the rim of a tattered red steel roof. A large wren flew up and landed on the ledge for a moment to relax before hopping back into the wind in search of a warmer perch. In popping up, it caused one of the icicles to break off and drop into the dusty layer of snow coating a set of front porch steps. Its fall ended in a small poof - one of the handful of sounds in the neighborhood. The other sounds included the gentle howl of the breeze, attempting to play the tune of whispers on its flute, and an electrical generator suffering from a mild case of mechanical pneumonia.

The generator fed power into a large wire that weaved its way up and along a brick wall and slipped through a hole into the warmth behind the wall. On the other side, a Russian in his mid-to-late twenties sat nestled in a cotton comforter in his easy chair, sipping away at a hot cup of coffee and staring into the boxy field of puny LEDs before his eyes.

A frown was just about to slip across his face when the phone rang. How dare a modern communication convenience steal him from the warmth of his chair? Why couldn't he simply sulk in silence until the afternoon. He didn't need to work today, did he? It was Saturday, wasn't it?

The slender man slowly rose from his comfy cushions, softly trod across the carpeted room, and proceeded to free the buzzing perpetrator from its hook.

"And?"

The voice of another young man broke through the crackling static of the line. "Evan! What are you doing this morning? Still in bed?"

"No, I'm looking over the assets."

"Oh good, you're at least working. I sent you a message on chat, and you didn't respond, so I thought you might still be throwing up 'z's, as the Americans say."

"No, I'm not a sleepy head just because I'm quiet most of the time."

"Ehe, well, in any case, Doslad thinks it's time to finally allow for testing."

"Great. But you know he would've rather waited another week, given how frightening it may be to test this code."

"True, true. But we Russians can always wiggle our way out if trouble, no?"

"This code put millions of children into comas."

"Children!"

"It practically stole their consciousness. I know for a fact that I'm still human, even if I am Russian."

"You are a special breed of human, my friend. You are Russian!"

"My confidence is bursting."

"So is your sarcasm, I see."

"I'll wait until we're ready for Noah's Ark, then I'll go for a test run all by myself just before releasing the animals. I don't want any surprises."

"Ok, sounds fine. Pretty soon everyone will be able to enjoy the world in complete safety, so please enjoy the precious moments we have before our servers are flooded with noobs."

"You realize people aren't going to swarm to an obscure Russian mirror, right?"

"Why not? They came for T and T."

"You are hopelessly optimistic, Zakhar. Hopelessly optimistic."

"I know."

"I'll get on chat, and we can continue our conversation from there. Right now, I want to get back into my nice, warm chair."

"You do that. Alright comrade. Later."

The two of them hung up simultaneously. Never had a click been so perfectly timed. A rag-tag team of misfit programmers would soon be running almost perfectly in sync and in less than a couple of months would be ready to beta test their own cobbled version of a prized game.

It had been no more than three weeks since Dasomov and company had copied and downloaded the necessary files and assets to recreate _The World,_ a fully-immersive virtual reality fantasy MMO game. _The World_ was the first game to be released for ALTIMIT OS, the operating system to which the majority of the world had switched after the Pluto's Kiss incident. Consequently, it had become incredibly popular, selling over a billion copies worldwide. However, the game turned into a curse. Millions of individuals had become trapped in comas from playing the game. Internet legends were born concerning saviors who had defeated monsters within the game in order to free the comatose victims. The company responsible for the game - CyberConnect Corporation - had tried to hide the incidents and conceal the extent of their responsibility for fear of irreparable publicity. Nevertheless, only some of public backlash had been diverted. The company finally pulled the plug on their latest edition of the game: _The World R:2_. It was by no means the end of the corporation, but it was a good enough stunt to appease the populace.

The Russians didn't blame CyberConnect for the tragedies even if they did blame them for incompetency in handling the game. The reality was that _The World_ had been built atop a game known as _Fragment. Fragment_ was the work of a genius German programmer named Harald Hoerwick. As lifelong lover of Emma Wieland, Hoerwick had centered the game on Ms. Wieland's incomplete tale, _Epitaph of the Twilight_. The game, much like the poem it centered on, was infused with mystery and damnation. The game itself seemed to have a curse embedded into its very source code that was brought to fruition with every step an avatar took in the game. No one knew whether the curse was intentionally coded in or came from an extraordinarily complex bug. All that was known to date was that the core code had brought about the birth of the ultimate AI named Aura and everything fundamental about the game seemed to be tied to her. Whatever the cause of the anomalies within the game, it would likely be found by first investigating her. Such an investigation was one of the many plans the Russians had in mind as they added game maintenance to their small list of daily duties.

Among the other duties were game asset reviewing and filtering. These responsibilities fell squarely upon the shoulders of the scrawny gamer named Evan who had resumed his position among the poof after the brief telephonic interruption. Reviewing assets was anything but easy. The shear quantity required a droning number of hours that would have made dead men out of the Royal Guard during a queen's speech of similar time length. Evan had the time but not the patience, so to say it was a chore would've made it sound as if washing all of the windows on the Empire State Building were all in an average day's work. The process could not be automated, however. The vast majority of the assets were visual or audio and needed to be inspected for abnormalities and defects in ways only humans would care about.

The vast majority of assets were seemingly trivial things. There were logos and crests, purchasable knapsack items, sound files of buzzes, beeps, bloops, and burps, and hundreds of miscellaneous images that only found meaning within certain contexts within the game. What was the purpose of image "black_panel_a88"? Or what about sound file "beam_089"? One could only guess at their application. What was important was that they loaded, they didn't contain any malicious code, and they looked (or sounded) decent at worst. Now and then, a sound file would contain some white noise that needed to be smoothed out and an image file would have a dirty pixel here or there. These would introduce brief moments of excitement into Evan's morning whereby he would fire up his editors like a doctor in love with his X-ray machine. After a minute or two of tweaking, he would return to the grind.

The exhausting task of asset review would begin early morning at some wee hour and continue up until 8 or 9AM. If it continued, it meant Evan had no work that day. If it ceased, it was usually followed by Evan shoving a scrambled egg and slice of toast into his month before heading off to the place that paid his bills. He would then return sometime that evening, carrying a small bag of groceries and a smile, and walk inside feeling once again proud he could provide enough for himself to buy the food items he wanted and keep the snow off his head.

It wasn't easy being a tenant. But neither was being a renter. Evan understood this like a lawyer understood the contracts he wrote. His stay had begun with a rocky start, and by now the landlords had a long list of things about Evan that irritated them. However, as the years had gone by, their relationship with him had settled into a nice size rut large enough for all of them (and perhaps a dog had Evan wanted one). Evan's bachelor tendencies were overlooked so long as he willingly cleaned up once a month and kept the moths and rodents away. Evan was more than willing to do that. He wasn't a clean freak, but nothing brought a frown to his face faster than sharing his hard-earned crackers with the pantry pest parade. Time and again the tiny troublemakers would pay a visit only to find their hiding places destroyed and poisonous morsels placed near their dens. The battles would last a week or two and end without so much as the clanging of a single metal weapon. Thereafter, Evan would march triumphantly to headquarters with a bag of carnage and be simultaneously complimented on his success and scolded for bringing it in.

All in all, Evan's situation made it ideal for him to dedicate time to games. When Russian fans of .hack started organizing a raid on CyberConnect to steal its assets, Evan jumped in right away and volunteered to sort the game files. It was an offer the organizers denied like the greedy deny money. Not more than three hours after the raid was scheduled to take place, a brief anonymous email landed in Evan's box containing the login credentials to a private server located in his homeland. Immeasurable dirty work lay ahead, but the fun was just beginning.


	3. 03

*Beep* *beep* *beep* The incessant sound of a cheap alarm clock pounded the ears of a scruffy old duffer hibernating below the covers of his twin-size bed. Even below the mountain of blankets, the mound on the bed was as large as a polar bear. Out of its snow, a paw snuck out and smacked the alarm with the grace of a bowling ball.

Despite all common predictions, the hunk of a man was neither a heavy eater nor a sleeper-inner. The clock read 4AM, and in a matter of 20 minutes, a mild-flavored beverage would be warming up over the stove for breakfast and a weary-eyed Russian would be reviewing a couple pages of hand-written notes, all signed by their current reader: Yegor Konstatinov.

Yegor was a data scientist. In the wee morning hours, he would review notes for work that he would have to regurgitate to clueless coworkers before resuming his customary spot in a cubical on the third floor of the ugliest office building in town. All day he would spend analyzing data, dreaming of the day beyond hope when doing this sort of work would be as exciting as it was when he was a fresh graduate. Then, to his surprise, that day came.

A month and a half ago, his favorite bulletin board service had been buzzing with rumors of a tempting proposal: to steal the code of _The World_ from CyberConnect. Naturally, whoever did it would greatly appreciate the help of a fellow programmer and data analyst, Yegor thought. No resume required, Yegor was in. But to gain the favorable eye, he listed some factual details about himself that bordered on unbelievable when posted online. The organizers took the bait, and within a matter of days, Yegor was a co-leader in an operation the forum members started to call "The Fall of Lucifer" in derogatory commemoration of the ousting of CyberConnect from power over the game.

Being a team leader meant dedicating time even when it came in short supply. Now and then, he would sneak peek at recent posts while on the job just to make sure he stayed on top of the news and aware of the rumors. At some point, someone at work caught wind of his misbehavior and decided to ease his pain. The two of them played tag-team reading the forums so that neither one would be caught and both had something interesting to wink and whisper about at lunch. Helpful as this was, it didn't free up enough time for him to keep up with his new "part-time job". Yegor debated switching jobs, but employment was hard to find. This too made for a table-time topic.

"Any new options yet?" a mellow male voice would ask with half-hearted interest. He could always guess the correct answer, but it was worth asking to at least start the conversation.

"No," Yegor would reply. "But some stuff is still promising," he would lie.

Both knew this was dishonest, but neither one cared.

"Why don't you try the new place?" came the overused joke.

Yegor's responses to that would alternate from day to day, ranging from a short chuckle to a depressing groan. "They would work me more than here," he would retort.

He would be met with a shrug that he would reciprocate a second or two later.

"Maybe it's worth a try. I don't know. If only starting my own business were easier."

Thoughts of having his own business dwelt in Yegor's mind like the frogs in a swamp. He knew it would be the best thing for him, despite how fleeting the opportunities for it might be. He craved it like the snake craving the frogs, but every time he explored it, something always stood in the way. Regulations were among the many problems, along with poor business relationships and the inability to market himself to the right people. Still... he continued to dream. Even now as he analyzed the papers in front of him, the dream was alive and kicking.

It was about 7 in the morning when a reminder came for his other dream. On his laptop, a notification popped up for a chat conference. He needed to leave for work soon, but this conference couldn't wait either. He opened up the chat window and looked at the starting messages.

Doslad: "Greetings comrades. Heaven's water has been divided. Let the earth bring forth new vegetation."

According to this, the stage in the project known as "Heaven's Water" was complete. The project's asset manager - whom Yegor only knew as Jyos - had finished sorting some of the key files for getting the game - _The World_ \- up and running. Finally, after all of this time waiting, Yegor would be able to re-explore the main sectors of Mac Anu and Dun Loireag. Not much would be in them yet, and he would be exploring with a floating camera, but at that point, his secondary roles in the project would begin.

As data analyst, Yegor was responsible for a number of things, including analyzing the relationships between entities in the game, updating user avatar code, and analyzing and fixing bugs in character code. It was a tremendous amount of work, and he knew he would need help and would have to delegate the duties. But once those tasks were complete, _The World_ would be fully understood and the team could make strides to making it safer for all to use. Nothing would disappoint Yegor more than for a single comatose victim in this project now that it was under his careful oversight.

Yegor typed in a reply in the chat: "All things on this earth are connected in an intricate web and grow steadily. The soil is hard, but it will soften... hopefully soon."


	4. 04

Chat meetings always began disorganized for the rag-tag group of hackers. Everyone would begin by ensuring they had a secure connection, which meant doing more than simply checking to be sure they had and were using the latest SSL. It also meant an awareness of and concealing activities from eavesdroppers. Any uninvited little bird that wanted to join the morning chorus would be met by a ruckus of meaningless ramble conveyed in a manner meant to resemble a clan of pixel-piercing pike-men arguing about their strategy for the next level of Conquer the Castle.

Once in privacy, guts would be spilled. For a solid ten to fifteen minutes, everyone would blabber about their week and joke about their current progress. If the joking didn't gradually die, it would ultimately killed after the first joke about the project never being finished. Dasomov would order everyone to stop. As the leader and someone who took the project seriously, he didn't want any pessimism lurching into the ranks - something that was very likely considering the dominant personality types in software development. Dasomov could have kicked people from the team, but he knew the remarks were only jest. Besides, he knew in advance that these sort of remarks would be made. Countless fan-made games and fan-mods had ended in unfinished wrecks of spaghetti code and partially-completed compilations of assets. With so many failures, it seemed the leftovers of most fan-mods were doomed to fall into neglect and abandon, short of Total Annihilation.

"Shocking we've made it this far," began one of the members. "You know it's going to make our failure even worse."

"Alright, everyone, quiet!" Dasomov typed in under his alias Doslad. "We've got work to do, so pay attention because we're about to go over current status. Xil-Sta, how's the story?"

Xil-Sta replied, "On it's way. It's a fantastic journey of hope and despair. The players encounter the Third Death on their way to the Mountain of Flames where they must obtain the Shield of Enlightenment to save the world."

Someone random then chimed in, "Could you PLEASE read the backstory of the World! P-L-E-A-S-E!"

Other random users expressed similar sentiment.

Xil-Sta tried justifying his work. "We're creating a new world. Where's your imagination?"

At this, a load of complaints streamed in, only stopped by Dasomov asserting command.

Doslad: "Ok, ok! Stop everyone! Let's get back to business."

Mikmik: "I like a new story, but I'd like it to at least make sense in the world."

Doslad: "Yes, indeed. Xil-Sta, please read the game background at least. You should know the Epitaph of Twilight and have a reference to the Key of the Twilight."

There was a pause.

Xil-Sta: "Fine."

Doslad: "Speaking of which... Zontna, what's your status?"

Zontna: "If you're hoping I know where the Key of the Twilight is, you've underestimated the complexity of this code base. It's a monster."

Doslad: "Too many lines of code for you?"

Zontna: "No. Just it's mechanics are incredible."

Doslad: "Well, I have good news for you."

Zontna: "Oh?"

Doslad: "We just got a German on board. He boasts he could probably understand the codebase better than we can because the original programmer for the World was German."

Zontna: "I'd have laughed at that a few weeks ago, but about now, I could use the help."

Doslad: "Unfortunately, he's not online yet. I guess he's still having trouble connecting by proxy. Sweden doesn't seem to like us these days."

Zontna: "Give him the Komet portal."

Doslad: "It's being updated. The latest on its news page said Lazerknife Securities in the United States reported on a flaw in one the libraries it uses."

Zontna: "So? Oh, it's probably a networking library, isn't it?"

Doslad: "I knew you'd catch on."

Zontna: "^(-_-)^"

Doslad: "Anyways, he should be on soon. In the meantime, let's discuss asset sorting. Jyos?"

Jyos: "I can't yawn in chat very effectively."

Doslad: "Droning, eh?"

Jyos: "I wish I could say, 'almost done', but I have yet to understand the rationale behind the organization of this data. There are so many replicates of things. It's like data was created by firing a paint-ball gun at a hard drive."

Doslad: "How close are you having assets ready to use."

Jyos: "Soon, actually."

Doslad: "Really?"

Jyos: "What I don't want is for us to boot this game up and have it recreate all this garbage."

Doslad: "Have you figured out where user-specific data is?"

KreigBrot: "Guttentach!"

Jyos: "That's just it. It's a total mess! All the assets are located in the asset folders, but inside those folders, it's anyone's guess where a file belongs. I found music and sound files in a main folder, but sub-folders also had various sound files."

Doslad: "Some of those sounds may be custom - added by users. If you figure out the organization, feel free to delete those sounds along with the other player data. They are probably replicates anyways, copied to sub-folders to make indexing faster."

Zontna: "Sounds like the German is here."

Doslad: "Kregbot, thanks for joining us."

KreigBrot: "KreigBrot."

Doslad: "You'll be working with Zontna on deciphering the German code base."

KreigBrot: "Wunderbar!"

Doslad: "Zontna can give you access to our server and fill you in on the details of where he's at and what he knows."

Zontna: "In a word, not much."

Doslad: "After you two get acquainted, we'll be expecting many good things to come from you two."

Several members laughed.

Xil-Sta: "Pretty sure Zontna is more into figure skaters."

Doslad: "Ok, cut it out everyone."

KreigBrot: "Beta...?"

Doslad: "Beta testers?"

KreigBrot: "Nyet. Beta... ta..."

Doslad: "Beta code?"

KreigBrot: "... X("

Doslad: "I don't know what you're trying to say."

Zontna: "I see his Russian is as good as my Spanish. This is going to be fun."

Doslad: "He can speak it better than writing it. Besides, he can probably read the code base faster than you can."

Zontna: "True. I didn't say anything about that though."

Xil-Sta: "Can you imagine figure skating in the World? That would be great!"

Mikmik: "What?"

Doslad: "Enough."

Zontna: "I don't see why I always get associated with the figure skaters."

Xil-Sta: "We could have alternate characters that wear skates!"

Doslad: "Just get back to the story."

Xil-Sta: "Hey, that's a great idea!"

Mikmik: "I am so lost right now."

Zontna: " Mikmik - Step away from your computer"

Doslad: "I can't see that going well."

Xil-Sta: "Do that."

Mikmik: "K."

Zontna: "Not what I meant."

Xil-Sta: "Amen."

Doslad: "Hold it! My comment applied to your previous one, Xil-Sta."

Xil-Sta: "Yes? It followed it."

Mikmik: "Leaving now."

Doslad: "No, the one before that!"

Zontna: " Mikmik - I meant it to be a question."

Pause.

Xil-Sta: "I think we lost someone."

Mikmik: "I'm still here."

Zontna: "Good."

Xil-Sta: "Hurray!"

Doslad: "Everyone SHUTUP."

Xil-Sta: "Grouch."

Doslad: "You especially, Xil-Sta. You're derailing our conversation."

Xil-Sta: "Sorry, but everyone knows us Russians love skating."

Mikmik: "I do."

q5corbo: "What'd I miss?"

Xil-Sta: "You learned something new, German."

Doslad: "Enough."

Zontna: " q5corbo - Everything so far."

q5corbo: "`(:-S)"

Xil-Sta: "Fine. -_- I need fun."

Zontna: "We went over the fact that we aren't done with most things."

Xil-Sta: "I could add skating to the story."

Everyone else in unison: "NO!"

Doslad: "Alright, listen up. I've recruited a number of other individuals to help us. Everyone new is assigned to asset sorting. First person to figure out the correct structure of player assets will be given a prized player character to play in game. Zontna and Kegbot, you two are on code review, so we'll give you some other characters. But you two need to figure out the code base. I'll be helping you out after next week, but first I need to oversee asset sorting along with Jyos."

Zontna: "Ok. Anything else?"

Dasomov usually had some words he believed would be motivational before they began their chores. No one ever said anything about it, so he wasn't certain of their reception. More than likely, they would peek at a few words - if they even cared - and then proceed with their duties. Regardless, those words of encouragement were, at least to Dasomov, something of a symbolic opening to their journey that would hopefully - against all of the usual expectations of a fan-production - end in a publish-worthy mod.


	5. 05

Mikmik opened his eyes to see a vast and beautiful world full of interesting shapes and sounds and still... incomplete. The scenery was meant to depict floating mountains, but a variety of things ranging from tiny rocks to entire mountains were still missing from the original scene. A sad sigh would not have arisen in Mikmik's throat had nostalgia not paid a quick visit.

When the moment had passed, Mikmik turned and proceeded to test the mobility of his avatar. For all the hours he had played in the original, never once had he experienced the pleasure of utilizing that most restricted of privileges: God Mode. It was more than being able to hover through the air without wings and pass through walls; it was a set of tools to change things on the inside from the inside. It was a set of features reserved exclusively for administrators and developers.

The original game of The World didn't quite have anything like it. There was an Admin Mode, but even this was bizarrely limited in scope. Zontna suspected it had been patched on when CyberConnect had obtained the game. For reasons unknown, it seemed the employees of CyberConnect had chosen to work alongside the system rather than defy and lord over it as the Russian team now did. Every day, some new feature was added to God Mode that made editing and managing The World a little easier.

Playing in God Mode had its perks and its cons. On the one hand, you could do just about anything you needed to do. On the other hand, the magical nature of the world quickly vanished when you realized everything was just a bunch of infinitesimally thin polygons suspended in the black abyss of the back buffer. The game felt more like a construction site than a fantasy world. In God Mode, stats were meaningless, avatars were interchangeable, and physics had no effect. All of it was necessary for development.

Having inherited the game rather than having created it, the new developers found themselves using their God Mode for exploration as much as recreation. A couple of "root towns" - the zones of the game that acted as way-points between other zones - were reconstructed as part of "Task Lazarus", whereby old parts of the game from previous editions were restored. This required digging through files both by browsing and by virtually exploring them to see what may have been missing and what was actually there.

On this particular occasion, Mikmik decided to traverse the pathways of the floating mountains of an original game map - Dun Loireag - in search of ideas. Mikmik, the youngest of the developers, was in charge of coming up with fun new ideas for the game. In order to do so, he felt he needed to explore the most remote regions of the game including places player avatars weren't normally allowed to visit.

On his way up a mountainside, he noticed a large yellow flower that was unfamiliar to him. Nothing like it had been seen elsewhere in the game. As he approached it, the flower began to glow. Brighter and brighter it glowed until the light had become blinding when he finally reached it. Mikmik shielded his eyes for a moment and opened his developer control panel. He searched the list of unit types by tags, but since nothing matching its description could be found, he decided to select the unit and examine its properties. As he lowered his hand, however, the flower was gone.

Mikmik started to believe he had accidentally deleted the flower, and he checked the game logs from his control panel to see if there was anything suspicious. Nothing. God Mode did not provide an "undo" option, and thus any hope of "correcting" this accident seemed out of reach.

Chat window open.

Mikmik: "Attn Jyos: A flower is missing from your mountain."

A minute passed.

Jyos: "What kind?"

Mikmik: "A big yellow one."

Jyos: "That's not helpful. There are at least twenty different yellow flowers."

Mikmik: "But I don't know what kind it is."

Jyos: "Look it up."

Mikmik: "I can't find it in the asset listings."

Jyos: "How do you know what flower it is then? Just pick one from the assets."

Mikmik: "But this one glows and it disappeared on me."

Jyos: "It did what?"

Mikmik: "Disappeared."

Jyos: "I don't understand."

Mikmik: "It was glowing, I moved up to it, covered my hand, and when a removed my hand, it was gone."

Jyos: "Did you knock it off?"

Mikmik: "No, I didn't move much."

Jyos: "It may have fallen."

Mikmik: "Now it's here again."

The flower reappeared in front of Mikmik as he chatted. It didn't glow quite as brightly as before, but its rays of light were still blinding.

Mikmik backed off and the light decreased alittle, but there was something entrancing about it. Mikmik froze in his place, staring at it for what felt like only a moment.

Jyos commented again: "If it's there, then leave it."

But his response went unseen.


	6. 06

The modern world was full of ruckus, people babbling about this or that. Business was the hot topic, as it had been for all time. But since the end of R:2 service, a new buzz had started to infiltrate the backwaters of society and fill the adventurous with excitement.

The daredevils perusing the Russian forums hoping for a golden nugget found their treasure amid the chatter about a "phoenix World R:2". One such lucky hunter was a bold rebellious German named Jorg Bergmann. He immediately fell in love with the idea of breaking into the code base of The World and learning the secrets of his fellow countryman Howard Hoerwick. Thereafter, he made every effort to identify the leaders of the movement so that he could contribute. Despite his poor Russian, his efforts paid off, and Dasomov left him and Yegor Konstantinov - a.k.a. "Zontna" - in charge of figuring out the details. In this regard, Jorg - alias "Kreigbrot" - had an advantage: the main core of the code base was entirely in German.

For the first few months, Jorg had to spend time rehashing the same German translations to Yegor until finally the latter had memorized enough that they could carry on simple conversations. With the help of a pocket dictionary and some off-the-clock lessons in German, Yegor was finally able to pick up the pace.

The greatest challenge, however, was that the rest of the code base was an unorthodox blend of German and Japanese. The latter dominated user-interface code, while the former tended to handle the more complex details. The comments littering the code weren't any less convoluted, and each one of them invited a collective sigh from everyone on the The World Neuvo team having the duty of digging into the source code.

Nevertheless, once progress had picked up, people around the world started to take notice and pass the world along the internet underground. The mysterious cessation of support of The World R:2 by CyberConnect had left millions of individuals without a outlet to channel their gaming appetite. A few smaller games had been developed, but nothing quite had the sophistication nor intrigue of The World. Thus, when word finally leaked about the progress made by the small anonymous collective in the winter wonderland, a nice long list of emails of eager explorers seeking to be beta-testers was submitted to Dasomov for approval by the freshly-formed internet chat group named "Neuvo Komrads".

The state of The World Neuvo at that time put Dasomov in a tough situation. On the one hand, there was a flood of work still to be done, thousands of lines of code to check, hours of debugging to do, and gigabytes of assets to replace. On the other hand, Dasomov was thrilled that people were interested and even offering to help for free. After all, the project was meant for gamers around the world to enjoy, and knowing that they were looking forward to the game gave Dasomov the big boost of motivation he couldn't get from his morning liter of coffee.

Still, one matter did concern him. The user currently in charge of testing and coming up with new ideas was Mikmik, a person relatively unknown to Dasomov but one who had been with the project from its conception, the phase called "Dividing Heaven's Waters" or simply "Heaven's Waters". Mikmik seemed like a young, friendly fellow, but nevertheless very responsible. Dasomov wanted to hand him the responsibility of training and managing any new beta-testers, but Mikmik had not responded to any messages for over two weeks. Dasomov wasn't certain Mikmik still had an internet connection. Had there been another means of communication besides chat, Dasomov would have been hesitant to use it for security reasons, but in this case, it wasn't even an option: Mikmik's contact info was as mysterious as he was. All Dasomov knew in that regard was that Mikmik had discovered them via BBS and obtained the chat channel info from Zakhar, a.k.a. q5corbo.

Dasomov pulled up the chat channel on his laptop.

Doslad: "Anyone hear from Mikmik?"

Evan Petrovich - "Jyos" - was the first to reply. "Last I heard from him, he was on a mountain in Dun Loireag talking about some flower. Then he cut out. I haven't heard from him since."

Dasomov raised an eyebrow and typed, "He's not still in Dun Loireag is he?"

Jyos: "I checked twice, but I didn't see any flower. I haven't had time for a game of hide-and-go-seek if that's what he's doing."

Doslad: "Why would he be doing that? A game feature suggestion, maybe?"

Jyos: "That's what I figured too. I guess It's a good idea. I guess we'll eventually have to find him and see if that's what he had in mind."

Doslad: "Ok. If you find him, let him know I'd like to speak with him. I want him to oversee some new beta-testers who are going to come in and give things a spin."

Jyos: "How about some more asset sorters? What about more programmers? How about people who are actually useful?"

Doslad: "They _are_ useful. Some people are better gamers and can push stuff to the limits that we can't or wouldn't otherwise consider. We need to cover our edge cases."

Jyos: "Whatever. Fine."

Doslad: "You'll have plenty of time to play the game when we finish."

Jyos: "Which feels like a long time. I can't seem to finish these assets."

Doslad: "I thought you were done with most of them?"

Jyos: "I was. Someone keeps deleting my work. I've had to save the game's entire folder structure in a backup just because files keep disappearing."

Doslad: "I have them though, I think. I just saw them this morning."

Dasomov opened up some folders and began carefully examining the files listed. Earlier this morning, he had seen some audio and mesh files in the directories of recently-enhanced assets for the game. A few clicks and several swipes along the virtual scrollbar of his mousepad revealed to Dasomov that none of these files were present. Searching the folder with the automatic search turned up nothing.

Doslad: "That's weird. The files are gone."

Jyos: "The repository is shared, so if..."

Doslad: "No, I'm not looking at the repository. This is my own private copy. I mean, yes, it's connected to the repository indirectly, but I didn't update it from when I checked this morning."

There was a pause.

Jyos: "That's weird."

Doslad: "Yes, it is."

Just then, Zakhar barged into the conversation under his alias q5corbo.

q5corbo: "Guys, there's something going on our new world. You need to come see this. And I mean NOW!"


	7. 07

With a swishing sound, the rings of teleportation zoomed vertically up and around the avatars of the game masters Doslad, Zontna, Jyos, and q5corbo. Standing in the root town of Dun Loireag, they looked around to examine the situation. Around them were mountainous spires connected to plateaus and plateaus connected by bridges. On one plateau was a blue circle that acted as the teleportation gate. Near the spires were small shops meant to be manned by NPCs (non-player characters) that had yet to be enabled. The game masters looked out towards the sea of clouds and other spires in the distance.

An eerie aura swept over the landscape. The sky gradually faded from light blue into blood red. The clouds turned orange. The rune-like carvings in the mountains began to glow. Then there came a soft, high-pitched, indistinct sound from out of nowhere.

Jyos was the first to comment. "I hear something."

"So do I," added Zontna. "But I can't tell what it is."

q5corbo pointed and said, "Look!"

At the edge of the plateau on which they stood, there was another avatar. This avatar faced the open sea of clouds, sporting its backside in which there appeared to be large gashes. Each gash glowed a bright red and was two-thirds the length of the back, crossing vertically, horizontally, or diagonally as though made by flogging. The rest of the body wore shredded clothes. Floating near the avatar were four hideous-looking heads from whose mouths came chains that were linked to the wrists and ankles of the avatar.

At the sound of the voices, the heads revolved around the avatar, forcing it to face the visitors. The front-side of the avatar was morbid. The skin was a pale grey, and the body rested wearily in the chains. With its mouth gaping, its eyes stared emptily into space as though dead. But the face of the avatar appeared to be vaguely familiar.

"Mikmik?" said Doslad.

There was no reply. The head of the avatar slowly fell to one side, and the eyes began to glow orange.

Then there appeared in the sky an enormous black casket. It was elaborately decorated with golden curls, leaves, and two inscriptions, one above the other. The lower inscription was unreadable, but the upper one spelled out very clearly one thing:

"CONDEMNATION"

The casket opened with a load, deep moan, and there appeared in the sky in a mist an enormous black creature. It had wings like the legs of a scorpion, a body like a mantis, a tail like a demon, and a head bearing antlers of fire. The creature's color was so black that none of its surface features could be distinguished. It had a single eye glowing red and staring down at the puny avatars.

In an ominous, rumbling voice, the creature proclaimed, "You have trespassed and must pay the eternal price!"

"Where the hell did that come from?" swore Zontna.

"I can tell you most assuredly," Jyos said with a nervous voice, "That thing was not in the assets."

"Must have been hard-coded in," said Doslad. He then tried to load the administrator tools but received an error message. "Looks like this creature has some kind of admin control too."

"AAAAHHHHHH!" Jyos let out a scream. His avatar froze and began to turn grey.

"Let's get out of here!" yelled q5corbo.

At that, q5corbo and Zontna logged out, leaving Doslad behind. In his HUD (head's-up display), a foreboding message appeared: "LOGOUT FORBIDDEN". Doslad glared at the creature and then turned to look at his fallen comrade. After only a few seconds, the creature turned the avatar of Doslad into another zombie slave.


	8. 08

As history attested, _The World_ had suffered from numerous calamities, ultimately resulting in thousands of people falling into comas and being trapped within The World. Everyone on the team for _The World Neuvo_ should have been acquainted with this fact, or at least that's what Dasomov had presumed.

Having not trusted CyberConnect for their recent history, Dasomov had decided against using the CyberConnect headset for playing the game. Instead, he ran the game through his standard computer without the "recommended accessories". His headset he handed to a hardware expert and waited for analytical results, which were now on paper and buried in a desk drawer and waiting to be examined over a cup of coffee on a free afternoon. That afternoon seemed awfully appropriate.

Dasomov stared at his computer monitor and watched the static run across the scene. Some text repeated here and there, but none of it seemed meaningful. Dasomov tried to close the application. No go. It had taken control of his operating system. Time for the power cord.

 _*POW*_ Dasomov unplugged his computer and watched the monitor turn to black. He waited 20 seconds and then plugged it back in. Reboot required waiting a solid five minutes so the OS could relocate files lost or corrupted in the unexpected shutdown. But after that, everything else loaded with normal status.

Dasomov opened the chat window. As expected, it was red hot with chatter. Zontna and q5corbo were being incessantly pinged with questions by the other members. Finally, someone asked, "Where is Doslad?"

"Right here," Dasomov replied.

q5corbo: "You made it out!"

Doslad: "Sort of."

q5corbo: "What do you mean?"

Doslad: "My avatar 'Doslad' is 'stuck' in the game somehow. I'm not sure I can log in again under that username. I'm going to have to clean out my user data files and restart. In any case, we have a bigger issue on our hands."

Zontna: "We need to examine the code, figure out where that monster came from, and recompile."

Doslad: "There is that, but another issue on top of that."

Zontna: "Which is?"

Doslad: "Jyos and Mikmik are still stuck in The World."

Jyos: "Not me, I got out."

Doslad: "Excellent! What kind of setup are you using?"

Jyos: "What do you mean?"

Doslad: "To play the game, I mean."

Jyos: "Oh. I have a desktop with enhanced audio."

Doslad: "Why did you scream? Something to do with audio?"

Jyos: "That sound we heard coming in was amplified until it hurt my eardrums."

Doslad: "I didn't hear it because I don't have audio setup. I could only hear you via the chat window."

Jyos: "I must have been pretty loud."

Doslad: "What did the sound sound like?"

Jyos: "It was just a nondescript noise. High-pitched, but that's all I can tell you."

Doslad: "I see."

Zontna: "Any ideas on what it means?"

Doslad: "Not yet. But in any case, I want to explore this matter further without tampering with the state of the game for two reasons. First, we don't know if Mikmik is trapped in there. Second, we need to know how this monster was generated and where the code is that handles this monster. If we shut down the game too soon, we might lose it. However, I think it's obvious CyberConnect has hard-coded this monster in... that is, if it isn't created from pre-existing entities."

Kellei – one of the newbies on the team - chimed in, "Why would they hard-code-in a monster?"

Zontna: "So you can't get rid of it merely by deleting assets. In other words, someone wants this monster in the game no matter who gets a copy. This also means that this monster is embedded in the game with the expectation that it will respond to whomever might have the ability to delete assets. In other words..."

Kellei: "In other words?.."

Doslad: "CyberConnect planned on guys like us stealing the code."

Kellei: "But if we have the code, can't we just remove it?"

Zontna: "That gets tricky. The code base for this game is pretty huge, and half of it is written in German and the other half in Japanese, making it especially difficult to follow. I can't speak Japanese, so it makes reading code added by CyberConnect very difficult. And since they are the ones who most likely added the monster, it's their code we have to read."

Kellei conceded. "I see. So slow going then.."

Zontna: "Slow going... unless Kreigbrot knows some Japanese and just isn't telling me."

Kreigbrot: "No. I do not."

q5corbo: "So... Course of action?"

Doslad: "The admin panel that came with The World didn't work, so we'll have to directly load the game with our custom admin controls. They should still function, and they have the most direct control over the entities in the world so we can do some inspecting with them."

Kellei: "Can't you free Mikmik with our admin controls?"

Zontna: "No. We don't know how he's trapped nor the mechanics involved. Our admin controls are primarily for entity manipulation and tasks the built-in controls couldn't handle."

Jyos: "Someone else could get trapped in there, you know."

Doslad: "Yeah, you need a safe computer setup like mine to avoid that. But it should be safe for us to work through our custom admin panels alone because then we won't be subject to world physics. We basically become flying cameras instead of standard users."

Kellei: "Fun!"

Doslad: "On the other hand, in order to get this monster to reappear, we need a guinea pig who will at least draw it out into the open so we can examine it."

"That would be me," came a new voice.

Doslad: "Thanks for volunteering. Everyone, please welcome our first official beta-tester: Tovia."


	9. 09

After formulating a solid plan of action, the team divided into task forces and set about their duties. Yegor (Zontna), Jorg (Kriegbrot), and their crew focused their efforts on identifying embedded mesh data in the source code in hopes that they might uncover traces of the dark monster. Dasomov drilled members on how to quickly login and view the software debug logging without being detected. Evan (Jyos) searched old assets and came up with lists of modifications of the avatars. It was Dasomov's suspicion that the creature had been triggered by some modification of data in _The World_ , enabling the dark monster to be activated based on a data integrity check. Even, however, called this into question.

Jyos: "I'm finding it hard to believe that our modifications of the assets triggered the monster."

Doslad: "Why wouldn't they? Obviously, CyberConnect doesn't want anyone messing with their stuff."

Jyos: "Yeah, but doesn't it seem strange to you that are current modifications up until this point have not had a negative impact nor triggered any boss like this?"

Doslad: "True. It could have been expecting some kind of authorization key that we failed to provide within a certain time period."

Jyos: "Maybe. But something else is on my mind."

Doslad: "Such as?"

Jyos: "When I last spoke with Mikmik, he mentioned seeing a flower that disappeared and reappeared. He said he couldn't find the flower in our database, so we must not have put it there. He was also located in a place that regular game characters never reach."

Doslad: "And you think this might have tripped it?"

Jyos: "I don't know. We can try it. To test my theory, however, all we need to do is send our beta-tester to a different zone and see if the monster is triggered again. If not, then there is something in Dun Loireag or something Mikmik did that triggered it."

Doslad: "Good point. We can give it a shot. We can see if that same activity works in a virtual machine and ensure that it isn't CyberConnect trying to embed their junk into our code while we're working on it."

With that in mind, Dasomov set up a virtual machine for simulating the situation and asked Tovia to do some exploring around this private instance of _The World Neuvo_ while he monitored the debugging information being spit out on an application console window. As Evan had predicted, nothing happened during normal game activity.

"Trying climbing one of the peaks," Dasomov instructed.

Tovia tried to obey but then replied, "The game won't let me."

"Wait a moment. Let me alter your position." Dasomov typed in a couple commands and acquired full control over his beta-tester's avatar. A few more keystrokes put Tovia on the slope of the same mountain where Evan said Mikmik had discovered the flower. Dasomov then relinquished control of Tovia's avatar so as not to interfere with anything that might happen.

Tovia approached the summit of the mountain with a hop and a skip, but as she approached the tip of the peak, a small bug-like creature popped out of the ground and bid her halt. The creature was grass-green and resembled a mantis in shape. It had a single, orange eye that dominated its face. On both sides, it had short fibers stretching out.

"What are you doing here?" the bug inquired.

"Just exploring," replied Tovia.

"How did you get off the path?"

Tovia wasn't sure how to respond. Would it believe a lie? "I simply climbed the hill?"

"You could not have glitched into here," the creature remarked. "Did you cheat?"

Tovia tried to act confused. "No, I just climbed the hill."

The creature eyed her with suspicion. "You cheated, didn't you?"

Tovia wasn't sure of what to say next. Her acts of denial were only making things worse. She noticed the little bug was staring at her intensely. As she looked closer into its eye, she started to feel a queasy and decided to reveal this to Dasomov via chat.

Tovia: "Doslad, this creature is doing weird things to me. I feel this tingling feeling running through me as it's looking at me."

Dasomov changed the view of his in-game camera to see from the perspective of Tovia. Then it hit him.

"I just realized this creature is a small version of the one we encountered in the other fork, I mean, the main fork. The creature is probably scanning you to see if you have any special privileges. It won't find any though."

Dasomov eyed the creature with interest and mused to himself, "So you're the gate-keeper eh?" He looked back at his chat window and responded to Tovia.

"I've got enough data. You can log out now."

"Are you sure?" she replied.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

With that, Tovia logged off.

Line by line, Dasomov thoroughly searched all the debugging information printed on his console, and his hard work ended with a smile. There among the hundreds of messages was one hinting at his target of choice: "Loaded Krikle (Mobashem) (582 vertices). Listening on 65.32.87." In the log files he exported, Dasomov found a plethora of information on this "Krikle", which he promptly sent to Zontna along with an explanation:

"Found a familiar-looking miniature, which springs up when you explore off-limits parts of the Dun Loireag zone. Turn it black, scale it up, and add the bony wings and you'll have our foe. Some details may have been added to the full-scale creature, but I bet the ratio of distances between the primary vertices is the same. You can thank Jyos later."

The debug information had provided two key words of interest: "Krikle" and "Mobashem". These could easily be searched for in the game source code, and if one of them contained information for a character mesh, then any related meshes might contain data with similar proportions. Searching for a more complex mesh would still be a complicated and difficult task, especially if meshes for other characters contained similar data. However, it was a start, and much better than nothing. Dasomov hoped that at the very least some comments in the source code near references to this "Krikle" or "Mobashem" would provide more information about where its data was hiding.

Much to Dasomov's surprise, less than twenty minutes had passed before Zontna replied with positive news.

Zontna: "That was easy."

Doslad: "You were fast."

Zontna: "I am a data-scientist, after all. The name 'Krikle' turns up a dozen references, including a large array, which I can only assume holds its mesh data."

Doslad: "Cool! Let me guess - you found the bigger model with that data?"

Zontna: "It gets easier than that. 'Mobashem' appears to be the bigger mesh, or at least, there is a larger floating-point value array associated with it."

Doslad: "Excellent!"

Zontna: "Of course, now that we've found this thing, figuring out which code controls it will take quite some time."

Doslad: "As can be expected. I guess I need to be recruiting a translator, don't I?"

Zontna: "If you would, please."

Doslad: "Alright, will do."

And with that, Doslad leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms, releasing a faint yawn along with their rise.

"So far so good," he said. His eyes became sharp and he stared with renewed suspicion at his computer monitor. "Too good."


	10. 10

An enchanting swirl of cream white and bean brown danced around the porcelain walls crafted by hands of the distant orient. The dance played out on the retinas of their audience under a spell of similar swirling.

Dasomov stared down at his cup of coffee for a half an hour. When he finally looked up, he noticed a scrappy pile of papers stacked in a corner of his desk; work to do. He hadn't touched his security work for a couple of days. No one had called to see how things were going. Dasomov was highly regarded by his peers in the security business, and naturally, many customers just assumed that meant perfect, professional service.

Having spent most of his life working, Dasomov had neglected other areas of his life. Now he was paying for it with an addiction to a video game. To make matters worse, it was now demanding his undivided attention to resolve an issue. He felt like he couldn't put it off like his laundry or ask - as he might ask a spouse - if he could deal with it tomorrow.

Turning in his office chair to look outside the window, he saw the afternoon sun coat the sill with a bright white light. Just then, a ticklish feeling pecked its way along Dasomov's hand, scaring him and prompting him to swipe at it. A small spider had crawled up Dasomov's arm to create the sensation, and now the tiny arachnid found itself on the back wall of the apartment.

"Have I been staring at the wall too long?" Dasomov thought.

Glancing down to see if the spider remained, another thought hit his mind. What if his band of rogue programmers was like this tiny spider to CyberConnect. It would be annoying while in sight and touching you, but once you overcame your initial surprise and dash it away, you could tolerate the spider and come to believe it had its own place in the world. Perhaps CyberConnect would eventually be willing to tolerate a competing product, but naturally, their initial reaction would be one of fear. Thus, the design of their own "scare tactics" - Krikle and Mobashem - may be very shallow despite being very intense. The "brief smack of the hand" of CyberConnect may be just that: brief. However, with too much popularity, _The World Neuvo_ might prove to be a noticeable irritation to CyberConnect - one worth squashing. Time would tell.

Dasomov logged back into chat. A stream of messages flooded the screen.

"How many files are there?! This goes on forever!"

"Anyone know what kimochi means?"

"My admin panel isn't loading correctly for some reason. Buttons are missing."

One set of comments drew particular interest from Dasomov.

"Is there a way to hide admin tools in a special item and equip them?"

"Isn't that the Twilight Bracelet?"

"Doslad?"

Doslad: "I don't know much about the Twilight Bracelet. It was a rumored item."

"It was an authentic item that was wielded by the great Kite, savior of The World," interjected Xil-Sta.

Dasomov, now curious, started a separate chat window for him and Xil-Sta so they could cut out the ordinary ramblings filling the backlogs of the group chat.

Doslad: "Finally learn something about the story?"

Xil-Sta: "Many things. I scoured old forums looking for info and people with the inside scoop. Met a guy who can tell you all about the history of The World."

Doslad: "And he probably knows your birthday too, right?"

Xil-Sta: "I love your sarcasm as much as a love tanks with pin-ups on the side."

Doslad: "Not sure what you mean by that."

Xil-Sta: "Nevermind that. He's very knowledgeable. Trust me."

Doslad: "I might but only after I know what kind of information he's giving you."

Xil-Sta: "His info checks out from my other sources, and no, none of them are his friends."

Doslad: "Ok, so who is this guy?"

Xil-Sta: "Ever heard of Balmur of the Azure Sky?"

Doslad: "... Um... Yes?..."

Xil-Sta: "This guy looks JUST LIKE HIM!"

Doslad: "-_-"

Xil-Sta: "He gave me the scoop on how Kite saved The World the first time. He met BlackRose, Kite's sidekick, somewhere on the Delta server. I forget where exactly. But that doesn't matter. After the chaos of the crisis in The World was over, he decided he should take notes before he forgot everything."

Doslad: "So you're going to write our game story based on some imposter's memoirs?"

Xil-Sta: "He's not an impostor. He just looks like Balmur. You know, with the hair and everything?"

Doslad: "I know who Balmung is."

Xil-Sta: "Yeah, Balmung. That's it. I knew I was spelling his name wrong."

Doslad: "Your story is sounding more believable by the minute."

Xil-Sta: "Tanks and pin-up girls."

Doslad: "Bears and bazookas."

Xil-Sta: "What?"

Doslad: "Just messing with ya."

Xil-Sta: "Thanks... -_-"

Doslad: "Ok, well, thanks for at least doing some research. I don't have time to look at the current work you've done on the story due to the Krickle-Mobashem Case."

Xil-Sta: "I understand. I hope you find him. ... How is the search coming?"

Doslad: "We'll find out after we break into The World today."

Xil-Sta: "How soon?"

Doslad: "Right after the lunch I almost forgot to eat."

Xil-Sta: "Better grab something."

Doslad: "Yeah, yeah."

Xil-Sta: "One last thing before you check out for lunch."

Doslad: "Yes?"

Xil-Sta: "I'm going to get one of our 3D modelers to put skates on a mesh."

Doslad: "The story better not have a figure skater in it."

Xil-Sta: "Even if she's magic?"

Doslad: "No figure skater."

Xil-Sta: "Even if she's married to Zontna?"

Doslad: "No figure skater. I'm going to lunch."

Xil-Sta: "Ah yes, never argue with a man with an empty stomach. I'll let you think about it over lunch."

Dasomov considered arguing but what was the point? He would only be wasting precious minutes he needed to scarf down a small meal before the action began.

Popping up from his desk, he rushed to the kitchen and hastily assembled a mound of sufficient sustenance fit for a pig. Keeping the meat on his "sandwich" required as many gymnastics as keeping the pickles on. The escaping food bits turned into grimy globs that rained upon the plate, the latter of which was then lapped like a dog dish to avoid the further wetting of fingertips. A couple minutes later, the sandwich saucer lay in a metal bin surrounded by its brothers and sisters awaiting a shower.

Dasomov logged back into chat.

Doslad: "Listen up everything. In exactly one minute, I'll be logging into the game as my new avatar Gemphl. Everyone who wants to be on this mission must be ready in that time. Remember the steps you need to take. MONITOR EVERYTHING!"


	11. 11

It was always a warm day, he would say. Opportunities were always in sight, victories were guaranteed, and the shelf on the wall was full of good cheer even when the last drop of vodka was gone. One by one, the candies of life would enter the lips of their king, the most grateful of all dwellers in his kingdom. It mattered not to Zakhar that at age 28 he was living in the basement of his brother's apartment.

Every cubic meter of the place reminded its visitors of what made Siberia famous. A blind Eskimo would not have recognized he was indoors. The campfire of this wilderness was too weak to fight and could only be found by its dim light. More appreciated was the sophisticated technology crunchy numbers under the desk and blowing out its warm exhaust on the thick pants of the megabyte master in front of the monitor.

Having been chased out of Moscow by corporate enemies and persuaded to leave by his boss, Zakhar fled east to live with his brother, a railway worker. He never considered it "fleeing" - merely vacationing for awhile. This apartment in Siberia was, thankfully, a temporary home for the both of them. Zakhar's brother intended to move on once the construction on the railroad in that area was completed - likely next year - and Zakhar decided he would leave when his brother did.

Living with his brother was easy for Zakhar, though the feeling may not have been perfectly mutual. Zakhar could get along with anyone and had a number of friends back in Moscow. His brother, on the other hand, was a loner. Stocky and independent, he wanted to take on life head on, no drag. Zakhar's arrival had been a shocking surprise, and he promptly suggested the basement, both because he knew Zakhar would be fine with it and because it would keep Zakhar out of his general living area. Out of sight, out of mind, he thought.

Every morning, however, Zakhar would greet him over breakfast and start rambling on about how successful their day would be. At first his brother suspected he was hiding some sort of psychological pain from years past, but after awhile, he became accustomed to the encouragement and reluctantly began offering it back (albeit in a suppressed voice). Zakhar felt accomplished by this, and it boosted his motivation in his own goals.

Having little work for the time being, Zakhar decided to invest it in helping _The World Neuvo_ project. He had initially joined the group while in Moscow, taking the username "q5corbo", but this location was more ideal. Not distracted by friends, having some savings and the bank, and connected to the internet meant that he could dedicate more to group efforts. What he had not planned on was chasing a strange entity disrupting their efforts to recreate The World. Nevertheless, of all of the volunteers, he was the first to call this "the first adventure in the _The World Neuvo_ ".

It was supposed to be a quick cleanup: see if either Krikle or its alleged manifestation Mobashem would attack them on the test server. If it would, they could monitor the monster from there, perhaps even freeze it and analyze it. If not, they would try to draw it from Dun Loireag and onto the test server. Negotiating with the creature was not an option, but that was irrelevant.

Zakhar logged in.

"This is going to be easy for us," he thought. "We're Russians!"


	12. 12

_The World Neuvo_ retained much of the same structure as the original game, _The World_. The zones players could occupy were called "fields", each one's name being prefixed by the Greek letter representing the server it was on. These fields were complete game maps (often open fields or cities) that contained dungeons - enclosed areas with monsters where treasures could be found. They were also populated with NPCs (non-player characters). It was possible to jump from field to field or server to server only by teleportation from a Chaos Gate, found in a root town.

The game's original NPC system had been enhanced by the hackers, but the "improved NPCs" were as diverse as the number of desserts you could buy in Paris. Some NPCs were smart and linked back to very clever AI systems. Others said a few clever phrases and fooled you into thinking their might be some intelligence behind their eyes... until they started rehashing the same lines. And some NPCs simply chased their tails. Many NPCs were frequently offline undergoing updates.

Some fields in The World were dedicated root towns. Each root town was the field on a server from which all of the other fields on that server could be found. _The World Neuvo_ had five servers: **α** \- alpha, **τ** \- tau, **Θ** \- omega, and **μ** \- mu, the test server. The Omega server contained most of the original data, whereas the other three were entirely original. On the Alpha server, the root town was **α** **Notre Borealis**. For the Tau server, it was **τ Novgorod**.

When the investigation for Krickle began, the test server had only one unnamed field. However, for this special mission, the hackers decided to add another field and name the both of them for clarity. The first was named **μ Test Phase Bolgograd** ; the other, **μ Capture Zone Wiessa** \- a tribute to a famous vocalist most of them knew.

 **μ Test Phase Bolgograd** was far from empty. It contained a number of random entities the hackers wanted to play with before deciding whether or not to add them to the final game. There were structures of various sizes and shapes and time periods, most of which possessed some sort of fantasy look in the opinions of their original creators. The process of approval required that they first place their glorious creations on display in the test server where they would be ridiculed to no end by the most critical in the crowd and finally granted approval by those with a true grasp of the work the construction of each creation entailed. The process ran at the pace of a postman through rush-hour traffic, and works were now stacked on each other to save space, making for a mess of meshes only Net Slum could rival.

 **μ Capture Zone Wiessa** was a well disguised menagerie. Upon entering, a player would see nothing but a barren desert. Below the surface was a network of caves where players could hide various items and themselves. More important was all of the software monitoring the system, logging, and reporting anomalies. Every tool the hackers had available for keeping an eye on the world was setup to run on the test server, and all of them were running on this field.

Normally, the test server was not connected to the Omega server, but for this special mission, it was necessary to link the two of them. Such a connection would reveal important details about the capabilities of Krikle and Mobashem. Furthermore, the test servers were easily shut off or isolated. In the case of something bad happening, it was deemed unlikely that Mikmik would be on the server when it shut off. And privately, Dasomov didn't care if they lost everything on there because it would have be re-uploaded eventually anyways. If there was one thing Dasomov could rely on, it was someone else taking pride in their work.

Despite being privately-owned by Dasomov, the servers for _The World Neuvo_ were located in a server center and accessible 24/7. This allowed other hackers to continue working on the game while Dasomov was snoozing. Yegor (as Zontna) was on the servers the most and appreciated the access, but he warned Dasomov of the danger of not having physical access to the servers.

"Someone needs to be next to the power cord," he said. "I don't believe in magic, but this game has strange things about it that we haven't had time to explore, and it's possible CyberConnect may still have sufficient control over the game if we don't go through the code very carefully and fix all the holes."

Dasomov did not ignore the advice, but there was little he could do about it. He didn't have open ports in his apartment for hosting so many servers, and he didn't know anyone who did. Even if someone in the group could be the host, who would it be? What if they decided to leave the group because of some misunderstanding or ill-will? At least the servers were only a 45-minute drive away. "In an emergency," he thought, "for this game... that should be plenty of time."


	13. 13

## 2018:04:30:09:02 - The World Neuvo: μ Capture Zone Wiessa

q5corbo looked out over the vast barren wasteland. So far, no sign of the monster Mobashem. No wind, no dark floating clouds, and no strange anomalies had yet occurred. Now playing as the floating, bodiless camera Gemphl, Dasomov zoomed to and fro invisibly throughout the game field. He would likely be the first to spot something, but q5corbo and a number of other testers were acting as the bait.

Time continued to pass, but nothing.

q5corbo reported: "No sign the creature."

There was a tense pause as q5corbo waited unreasonably yet impatiently for a response. Finally, Zontna broke the ice.

Zontna: "No signs in the logs yet. Nothing unusual coming up in the feeds."

The tense silence resumed, but with each passing tick, the mutual feeling went from apprehension to bewildered disappointment.

This time Gemphl broke the silence. "It's possible this monster is confined to original game fields."

Kellei chimed in, "Now you tell us."

Gemphl: "Someone is going to have to lure the monster in."

q5corbo: "I guess that would be me."

Gemphl: "Jump to Dun Loireag after I give you the signal. I want to make the jump first and keep an eye on you directly."

q5corbo: "I await your signal."

Gemphl: "And use only chat comm, no in-game chat in case this monster can detect our discussion."

q5corbo: "Aye, aye!"

## 2018:04:30:09:53 - The World Neuvo: Θ Dun Loireag

It took only a minute, but by the time q5corbo made the jump to Dun Loireag, Dasomov had forked and reconfigured a couple of monitoring programs disguised as port drivers. These programs saved output to readily-accessible text files both on the game servers and on separate servers so that the activity could be analyzed later. Complementing that, Yegor was watching the debugging logs and network activity for the Omega server so they could immediately respond.

q5corbo arrived in Dun Loireag at the chaos gate and surveyed the situation, looking out over where they had first seen Mobashem and then glancing up to the mountain where Krikle had been found. The immediate situation seemed normal - not a sound nor sign of disturbance.

q5corbo typed into the chat window: "Maybe it shut down already."

Gemphl: "Don't bet on it. It knows we came."

The clock ticked on for what felt like an hour, yet no sign of the monster came. q5corbo searched around for any clues, but upon finding nothing, completed his search at the plateau where it all began.

q5corbo: "I guess we forgot to invite the monster to the party."

Zontna: "Nothing unusual."

Doslad: "Hold on. I have a hunch this monster might only come out if it finds itself in competition with other admins."

q5corbo: "But it's not coming out for you."

Gemphl: "It doesn't see me as a player. I'm only a camera."

q5corbo: "True."

Gemphl: "I have an idea. Enable your admin controls but only the ones the game provides, not ours."

q5corbo: "Ok, and you think that will trigger it?"

Gemphl: "We'll see."

q5corbo enabled his admin controls. Nothing unusual happened.

q5corbo: "Nothing. No fireworks this time."

Zontna: "It probably thinks you're a regular admin now."

Gemphl: "Now turn off the game panel and enable our admin tools one-by-one, turning one off before you turn one on just to see which one might trigger it."

q5corbo: "Any suggestions as to which tool first?"

Zontna: "I have a suggestion: Turn on the one for moving units."

q5corbo: "Ok, now loading module Telekinesis."

Module Telekinesis loaded and a message for this appeared in the logging. Still, _The World_ remained as calm as a pleasant summer day.

Zontna: "This is starting to bother me. I wonder if this thing knows we're looking for it."

Gemphl: "That's possible, but it didn't seem intimidated last time, and we had all our powers then too."

q5corbo: "Ok. Turning that off. Now loading our entities search library."

No sooner had he done this then from out of the depths below the floating islands there came a creaking groan like the hull of a wooden galleon on its last voyage.

q5corbo: "Sounds like our guest got the invite."

A haunting black mist floated up and crept over the land. As a shell on the sea shore covered by waves, q5corbo was surrounded by the mist and tugged towards its source.

"What's going on?" he typed in chat. "I'm being forced against my will towards the cliff. Zontna, are you seeing this?"

Zontna's next words weren't what anyone wanted to hear: "What's going on?"

Dasomov checked the logs. No sign that the monster had been loaded.

Despite this, once again the game exposed its ominous side. The sky turned blood red and the runes of the mountains began to glow. Out of the black mist arose that terrible giant with antlers like fire and a body like a mantis: Mobashem.

At the feet of the beast and slowly floating towards q5corbo were two figures, cloaked in ragged clothes and having pale grey skin. Around their wrists and ankles were shackles, and the emptiness in their eyes swallowed the rivers of joy. Their faces were all too familiar now: they were the original avatars of Mikmik and Doslad.

q5corbo: "Good news! We found Doslad's avatar, and we can get it and Mikmik back at the same time!"

Gemphl: "Can you get it to follow you to the test server?"

There was a pause.

q5corbo: "I can't move. It won't let me."

Gemphl: "And you probably can't log out, either, can you?"

Pause.

q5corbo: "No."

Gemphl: "Darn... Looks like you might be losing yours too."

q5corbo: "Oh well. I'll think of a new character alias anyways."

Zontna: "Go ahead and shut off your game, q5corbo."

q5corbo: "Will do."

With that, the avatar of q5corbo became a player-less shell. A few moments later, the mists had flooded the mesh and transform it into a floating zombie resembling the other two.

In a surprising move, the creature glared up in the direction of Gemphl and finally spoke. With the voice of the queen of adders, the monster hissed, "There is no escape. Cleverness shall be rewarded with painful fruit. The child is born dead. A noose rings its neck."

The hideous beast flailed its demonic tail around as if trying to swat Gemphl like a fly.

Gemphl: "Hm.. It seems to recognize my presence."

Then, raising its eyes and uttering in the trance of a priest, the monster continued: "My tail scars the sky. Constellations crumble in its wake. What eye shall behold Land's End before failing? None can pass my vigilant guard!"

It spread its legs and the mist ascended into the air, creating pillars of fog the width of sequoias. On top, the pillars split up into branches that spread across the sky and weaved a net around the area where Gemphl flew.

Zontna: "I think our work here is done for today."

Gemphl: "Agreed. Sadly, it seems the creature has also won round 2."

Zontna: "Meh. The most points are gained in the final fight anyways. I have some thoughts on the matter to discuss with you."

Gemphl: "Alright. Logging out now."

## 2018:04:30:11:12 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

Dasomov switched over to his console screen and killed the process running the game. For a minute, he watched things unload, and a dozen thoughts crossed his mind. How could this creature hide from detection? Why didn't it simply delete them? Why didn't it destroy the game outright? Was it trying to capture them and turn them into zombies _before_ deleting the game? Dasomov found himself staring at a blinking cursor in the Terminal window. He pulled up the chat window. The sight of a private chat window from Zontna made him pleased.

"Time for some answers."


	14. 14

## 2018:04:30:11:19 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

Over chat, Dasomov told everyone to get off of the game. He then responded to the chat message to Zontna: "Ready."

Zontna: "I need to speak with everyone as a whole, but I wanted to chat with you first. This Mobashem may seem like a ghostly monster not being in debug logging, but the explanation is simple."

Doslad: "Go ahead."

Zontna: "A secretive logging mechanism might be built-in. Some flag in the code - maybe the class of the monster - might tell the logger that it's secret, so the logger ignores it."

Doslad: "But then for debugging..."

Zontna: "The flag might be hard-coded in. Once the flag is off, the character will be logged."

Doslad: "So it needs an override..."

Zontna: "The flag could be in either the character itself, the logger, or some intermediate function through which information is passed for debugging. Or..."

Doslad: "Or...?"

Zontna: "All of the code meant to log this creature has been deliberately deleted or compiled out."

Doslad: "We have the developer version of the code, just so you know."

Zontna: "How do you know it's not a release version?"

Doslad: "It's a long story."

Zontna: "I'd like to hear it."

Doslad: "I don't feel like telling it."

Zontna: "Why not? It might be good for me to know!"

Doslad: "No, I'd rather not. Quit prying!"

Zontna: "Pry? Is this something sensitive? I'm sorry, I didn't realize. I guess I just assumed since we've been working together a couple months that we'd be more open to sharing hacking tips. My fault - wrong assumption. Forget I asked."

Dasomov was stunned. He had mistakenly assumed Zontna had wanted personal information when in actuality he wanted hacking tips. The fault had been his own. What felt worse was his lack of trust in a man to whom he had given total control over his personal servers. Granted, the servers were dedicated to the game, but for the knowledgeable man sitting behind the username of Zontna, it would have been easy for him to have wrestled control of the servers away from Dasomov and infected everyone with malware for his own profit. Somehow, in these few months together, trust hadn't been a real issue with the core team. Perhaps the ease of cooperation had been possible all this time because all conversations had been centered on the game. Still, the question sat in Dasomov's room like a gargoyle, terrorizing him yet remaining ever static. He could leave it be for the time being, but it would inevitably return.

"Eventually," Dasomov thought, "when we start to play the game..." He paused. Creating a playable, fun experience had been his goal from the beginning, but was he pursuing a real possibility or merely chasing a warm and fuzzy dream? He had become entranced in just the building and managerial aspects to notice what was happening. The relational aspect for Dasomov was supposed to be like the relational aspect of any other MMORPG, or so he had initially assumed. Would those relationships he dreamed about be formed in the game itself when they started playing? Or did he even intend for that? Having worked with him for so many months, these other hackers deserved a closer friendship, didn't they?

What would happen when the gargoyle returned? Eventually, someone key in the game's management would likely be upset at what was going on. In a company, they could be fired, but in a private game-modders group, booting people could lead to other problems: The person might get revenge by sabotaging the project or discouraging other people to join. At the very least, they would leave an important administrative hole to fill. Considering the numerous failures of game-mods in the past, this was not an attractive possibility. If they were friends, it would be easier to talk to them and find out what was making them upset. Compromises could be reached. On the other hand, some friends could be difficult to engage and hard to get rid of if they were hurting the project more than helping.

Then again, those currently in important roles had been with the project for a long time and were reliable, except for one - Pugohed - who made the Kremlin and car salesmen look honest and could trick the Devil into letting him out of hell. Dasomov always kicked himself over letting the guy in, even though it was only for a week. By that point, it was evident Pugohed could not code so much as "hello world" much less differentiate between a mesh and a scene node. Thankfully, no one remaining even remotely matched his incompetence.

The gargoyle stared Dasomov in the eyes. Share or not? "Be exposed," it declared. Perhaps it was no accident that this metaphor of his tormentor came from sitting high aloft centers of worship to a god that promoted friendships and intimacy. As a static beast, it was unwavering in its message: nothing but complete surrender. But as the guardian of the house of God, it spoke only the truth.

Cocking his head and craning his neck back and right, his gaze raced along his cracked wall and towards the printouts of fellow comrades suspended on tacks. For a minute or two, cheerful memories found new life in his conscious. Then his eyes returned to his monitor and the messages from Zontna washed away the precious moment.

Zontna: "Anyways... I have to talk to the group as a whole about that."

Zontna: "But I wanted to ask if you'd found anyone who spoke Japanese and could code yet."

Zontna: "Are you there?"

Zontna: "Doslad?"

Dasomov realized his thoughts had been meandering for awhile. Zontna had likely rejoined the full-group chat and would no longer be monitoring return messages, so Dasomov switched chat windows.

The gargoyle could wait. It wasn't going anywhere, Dasomov thought in his dismissive, apathetic sort of way. But then his mental words choked him. It _wasn't going_ anywhere.


	15. 15

## 2018:04:30:11:41 - Real Life: Evan's House

The aroma of a South American brown bean drifted along the patterns of gusts formed by invisible monatomic substances. The cargo trucks of caffeine had dissolved in a bubbling pool of human oil and now awaited the signature move of their director.

Boasting the bravado of a T-34, a brewing pot glimmered in its steely armor atop the coils of resistance. Its skin still red from the fight, it had been recalled, victorious, and carried away the spoils of the battle, which it had poured out lavishly in the coffer of its king.

Evan brought his cup of coffee to his lips and tasted a sip.

"Ah! Hot! Hot!" he remarked in a dry, gasping voice.

He quickly but carefully pulled the cup away from him and set it on his desk near a stack of dusty papers he had been meaning to read.

Just then, the phone rang.

"Who is it?" he demanded.

"Lenin's little brother," replied another young man.

"He's dead."

"Careful, the Kremlin might be listening."

"The Kremlin is _always_ listening, and they already know he's dead."

"I don't know if you're busy, but the gang is cooking up a storm."

"On it," replied Evan. He hung up.

Evan looked over at the pile of dusty papers and sighed. Life was more important than a game, yet all he wanted to do was push it away. Why? What was so captivating about bits on a screen that he would willingly let his body wither and rot in his comfy chair rather than embrace the high-definition of a world with infinitely more possibilities? Then again, those possibilities were very unreal to Evan.

From an early age, Evan had dreamed of being a celebrated painter, but destiny in Russia was the same as its winters: cold. Not only did the stars not align, they were in the wrong hemisphere. No one of influence was interested in his goals and actively discouraged his pursuit of them, hoping to persuade him into something more beneficial to the country as a whole. Though uninterested technical courses, Evan picked the recommended "path of the future": Information Technology, or more as he saw it, "Data Manager". After attending the academy for the recommended duration, Evan retreated to the suburbs of a once-heavily-active industrial town. There were enough opportunities for him to remain employed but nothing that gave his life any meaning. He could only drown the sorrows of his inner child by entertaining it with candy. Moreover, becoming entwined in the lives of others had subconscious benefits Evan was already beginning to feel, including its most important one: a sense of belonging.

Evan sat in his cozy chair and fired up the chat window. Just as he had been informed, the chat window was buzzing with excitement. Questions and speculations were loading the logs. To catch his bearings, Evan felt the need to punch a hole in the chatter.

Jyos: "Can someone please tell me what's going on?"

The responses were less than helpful: "The raid bombed." "CCC is full of ..." "Test failed."

Doslad: "Zontna, I'm back. Sorry, I drifted into thought."

Zontna: "Ok, I tried explaining it to everyone, but for clarity, let's just go over things again in more detail."

More rambling occurred.

Doslad: "Everyone shutup! Zontna is going to give us the details."

Zontna: "Here's the run down: The monster never came on to our test server in any visible way. Instead, it seems to restrict itself only to Dun Loireag. The logging of the monster was limited to merely its loading. The reason for this is unknown, but I suspect the logging mechanisms were intentionally designed this way. Either the debug logging is done by the character class itself or it was made secretive to the logging class, especially to the universal logging mechanisms whose APIs we found."

Someone spoke up: "Let's check the implementation, then. We have the code, right?"

Someone else added: "This should be easy to fix."

Zontna: "No, we don't know where that code exists. The universal logging mechanisms we've use are from binaries that must be reverse-compiled if we want to know what's inside. We can do this, but Altimit makes this a pain by defaulting to obfuscating the opcode sequences in the binary and the output code is ugly. It's easier if we simply find the original code ourselves."

Doslad: "Which should be easy for our top data scientist."

Zontna: "Yes, I can do it, but here's the catch: If the logger settings are in a configuration file, they can be changed, but if the settings are built-in, then we have to hack the system as it's running."

q5corbo: "Sounds like fun for us Russians!"

There were a number of cheers.

Zontna: "As you can figure, we only get one try on the main servers. Failure results in a segmentation fault that will crash the program and erase every chance we have at recovering Mikmik. We can still use the test servers for any trial runs we need to make."

Jyos: "I share q5corbo's optimism in this. We can do this. We're Russian!"

Kriegbrot chimed in: "Und one German!"

There were more cheers.

Zontna: "If we succeed, we've only won part of the battle: logging. The logging should give us plenty of clues about this monster, but obviously, it doesn't eliminate it. We will still need to repeat this investigative mission we just performed."

q5corbo: "Ok, so we do it."

Doslad: "One more thing I'd like to add."

Zontna: "Go ahead, I'm done speaking for now."

Xil-Sta: "Until we start talking about the figure skater."

Zontna: "Quit it"

Doslad: "This last time, there are a couple of key notes about this monster. First, it did not delete me despite a very elaborate and scary-looking display."

q5corbo: "Well that's good news."

Zontna: "It's suspicious. I noticed that too."

q5corbo: "I'm glad you're optimistic."

Zontna: "I'm not."

Doslad's first point came as a surprise to Evan. Had the monster been designed to prevent people from hacking the game, one would expect that it would have examined the situation of the server network supporting the game and destroyed the game data.

Jyos: "Doslad, do you think we over-estimated CC Corp?"

Doslad: "What do you mean?"

Jyos: "As a gamer, I'm aware of the fact that many games are hacked and developers are as well. However, it seems odd that CC Corp would defend their brainchild this way."

Doslad: "It's a prized possession for monetary gain. Why not protect it?"

Jyos: "You see it from a business perspective, but the reality is that most hacks of a game are meant for gamers who want to use it on the original server. In other words, they want to cheat."

Jyos: "The game put on an elaborate display. Why such a display?"

Doslad: "To scare us from hacking the game, no?"

Jyos: "You're right, but think about the after effect. Who is going to see the display after it's over? The monster didn't delete you."

Doslad: "It couldn't delete me."

Jyos: "Fair enough, but I don't think that's the intention. Thinking about it from a gamer's perspective, I'd say the monster is intended merely to make an example of cheaters and put them out of action. I'd never heard of the monster before, but it was only triggered by something a normal cheater would do: explore off-limit areas. Modders like us don't usually go exploring; we replace everything. It was simply Mikmik's misfortune that he stumbled upon it."

The chat window was silent for a short while.

Doslad: "So you're saying I over-thought this?"

Jyos: "Maybe, I don't know."

Doslad: "I guess we'll get the answer to that through the answer to my second point. We didn't get to see how the monster disappeared. If this monster is intended merely for making an example of other gamers, then normal gamers without admin panels should be unaffected."

Jyos: "I would think so."

Kellei: "Someone needs to stay behind and watch!"

Tovia: "That would be me."

A number of others volunteered, and the chat room resumed its normal chaos.

Doslad: " Jyos - We'll talk more later."

And later they did. That evening, Evan clarified his thoughts on the matter to Dasomov in a private chat window.

## 2018:04:30:22:27 - Real Life: Evan's House

Jyos: "I truly think Mobashem was meant to make an example of cheaters and scare people from hacking the game."

Doslad: "It's starting to make sense now. Tovia noted that Krikle suspected her of cheating when she reached his flower but he didn't turn into Mobashem, probably because she didn't have any administrative powers."

Jyos: "Interesting."

Doslad: "Moreover, I think you're right about its attitude. I initially thought it didn't destroy The World because it wanted to capture us in The World and then destroy it with us inside, but I'm beginning to think I was being overly cautious as a security expert."

Jyos: "You're a security expert?"

Doslad: "In a way..."

Jyos: "Is that you're day job?"

There was no response for over a minute.

Jyos: "Are you still there?"

Doslad: "Yes, I'm here. I think our next investigative mission will answer some of these questions we have. We may know enough then to determine the true intentions of this Mobashem."

Jyos: "Not that I understand the coding side much, but I was wondering why you couldn't just examine the code and figure it out."

Doslad: "I would like to, but in some ways, I feel like this is a race against time."

Jyos: "You mean, for the sake of Mikmik?"

Doslad: "Precisely. We don't know what his situation is like in the real world. He could be dead. At the very least, I suspect he is in a coma. I doubt he would quit this project and not say anything."

Jyos: "Indeed. But do we have enough people to look into the code?"

Doslad: "The German has been looking into it, but his Japanese is poor. Unless I can find someone who speaks Japanese and is willing to help, it's going to take a long time to figure this code out."

Jyos: ":-/"

Doslad: "I'm not any happier about it than you. It'd be fine if we weren't racing the clock. If we knew Mikmik was in a hospital, we could take our time."

Jyos: "It's been two weeks, though."

Doslad: "I know."

There was a somber pause.

Doslad: "I wish there was some way of knowing, ..."

Jyos: "No contact info?"

Doslad: "None. Just his forum name. I could ask around, but I might as well ask for the phone number of the president's maid."

Jyos: "It's three-four-four twenty-seven-eighty-six."

Doslad: "What?! You know it?!"

Jyos: "Sometimes, it's just a matter of who you ask. And yeah, I met her at the academy where I graduated. She's a decent woman to be around. Nothing exciting."

Doslad: "I must say, you've given me some hope."

Jyos: "You're welcome."

Doslad: "Thank you."

Jyos: "Better get started asking around. I'll help."

Doslad: "Thanks!"

Jyos: "No problem. Let's find Mikmik, captain!"

Doslad: "Let's."

Jyos: "Jyos out."


	16. 16

## 2018:05:01:12:20 - Real Life: Anastasia's Room

Laundry rested neatly in the pristinely carved drawers. Three bottles and a couple jars of expensive makeup awaited silky hands near the bathroom sink. The blankets on the bed stretched out flush atop the cushy mattress. Every photo on the wall - big or small - was aligned precisely with an invisible line that ran horizontally around the room and intersected every photo's center. The closet arrangement positioned the shirts, skirts, and dresses from most modest to most casual. Only the desk was exceptionally messy and only because it was drying from an unexpected bathing in morning milk.

Though the carpet alone would have sufficed for the vast majority of the population, it did not provide the proper back support, and thus the princess of this room sat atop a velvet cushion on a simpleton's throne. She was prim, she was proper, she was Anastasia Yashenko.

On her lap sat her state-of-the-art computer, it's fan spinning quietly, hardly working. On the screen was a chat window buzzing with the blabbering of code monkeys whose mastery of their native tongue invited the most haughty of scrutinies by this screen's master had she not thought the better of it.

She sighed and shook her head. Perhaps one day, the rabble would appreciate the preservation of the structure of their social necessities by sweet and noble beings such as herself. Alas, that time could not come any faster.

Seeing the conversation digress, Anastasia decided to close the chat window but halted at the notification of a private chat. The valiant leader had called. Was he beckoning for her in search of wisdom? A single click would reveal the answer.

Anastasia opened the private chat window in the messenger app.

Doslad: "I need you to do something for us... offline."

 _Goodie!_ thought Anastasia.

She responded in her usual disguised voice behind the username Tovia.

Tovia: "How can I help?"

Doslad: "Find out all you can about Mikmik."

Tovia: "Are there any clues?"

Doslad: "None. Not even gender, but by the way they used to talk, I'd say it was a male in his twenties. Then again, everyone else but Zontna and Kregbrot sounds like that."

Tovia: "Understood. Is there no information on his internet connection?"

Doslad: "He used a proxy located in the Czech Republic. But there's no way of knowing if he paid for it or if that was only the outlet for an IP tunnel."

Tovia: "I would have to say that if this Mikmik is only a young man in his twenties playing video games, then he isn't likely to pay for a proxy service. Thus, the IP address you have is either his real one or is from an IP tunnel."

Doslad: "You think he's broke, eh?"

Tovia: "What do you think? By the way, uncle, how's your work coming along? You haven't skipped out on it just for this game, have you?"

Doslad: "What are you talking about? I'm not your uncle."

Tovia: "Your servers were buzzing significantly this week, especially with encrypted connections, so father decided to investigate. He found the game files unpacked. He didn't know what they were, but I did."

Doslad: "So maybe you're uncle has a copy of the game, too, eh?"

Tovia: "No, the two of you are the same. Father doesn't know, but I found my unique username in the files."

Doslad: "Savvy squirt."

Tovia: "And you talk like him. You taught me how to use command line tools. I would think that you would be proud of me."

Doslad: "If you really want to confirm our identities, why don't you stop by?"

Tovia: "Excellent! I'd love to visit your man cave. Are the rats still nesting below the faucet?"

Doslad: "I await your arrival with drooling anticipation... if you make it. Be here in exactly one week."

Tovia: "It's a train ride away!"

Doslad: "Clock is ticking."

Tovia: "Fine."

Doslad: "Don't forget about Mikmik."

Tovia: "What's you're interest in this guy, anyways? If he's caught in the game, what does it matter?"

Doslad: "If we can't get him out, then it'll scare away anyone else interested in playing this game."

Tovia: "Ah! So you intend to go public with this game, then?"

Doslad: "In a way. It would be nice to make all the effort we're pouring into it worth it in the long run. But there's also the fact that, if we can't get Mikmik out, we ourselves might be easily trapped in the game."

Tovia: "Understood. Even still, making something for the public doesn't sound like something you would do."

Doslad: "You really don't know me, do you?"

Tovia: "I'll stop by in a week."

Doslad: "We'll see. One last thing: Do you have a safe setup for playing the game?"

Tovia: "What do you mean? Of course I do!"

Doslad: "I mean don't use a headset. All the kids in Japan who went into comas playing this game were wearing headsets."

Tovia: "I don't have one."

Doslad: "Good. Just use speakers, keep the game on a basic monitor, and don't use any game-specialized devices. We don't know what they do yet."

Tovia: "Very well."

Doslad: "Talk to you later."

Tovia: "Later."

At that, Tovia closed the chat windows and tilted her head around to look at her bed. There on her pillow was a short strap whose ends linked it to a boxy yet sleek pair of goggles, meant for a place beyond reality.

"I'll be fine," said Anastasia. "Only the careless suffer harsh consequences."


	17. 17

## 2018:05:06:08:14 - Real Life: Cosmonauts Embankment, Saratov, Russia

With black-ringed eyes, Dasomov stared out across the rippling tide at one of the longest bridges in his homeland. Having neglected work to focus on game development, he was now jumping headlong into a stack of mysterious duties to beat a deadline that he promised to meet several weeks ago. Had these duties proven easy, it would have taken less than half the time he promised, but the years had blessed him with impeccable foresight for the standard scenario. Unfortunately, the standard scenario this was not. He was addicted to a game that, like a little demon upon his shoulder, suggested again and again that he postpone those tedious tasks and take on something with more excitement. Weeks had passed, and his conscience - and his deadline - finally convinced him it was time to reset the clock.

Running off pure will power, he had spent the week examining his client's codebase and agonizing over every little flaw he had to trace back to source. After completing the first half of his comprehensive checklist for the project, exhaustion had overwhelmed him, compelling him to retire to his easy chair until the tune of a timer reminded him to resume the process.

Finding the cat nap insufficient, Dasomov had decided to get some fresh air. Thus, this morning, he found himself relaxing in the winds of May.

At that moment, his cell phone rang.

He answered, "Yes?"

"Dazzy!" yelled an exuberant executive in his late thirties.

"Don't call me that. And no, I'm not done yet," Dasomov barked.

The voice responded uppity regardless, "Oh, I wasn't worried about the project. I know you'll finish. But I also know you can't wait for the next one, so I was thinking you'd like a peek at it early."

Dasomov paused for a moment. "I don't care."

"You sure?" the voice responded in bewilderment. "Normally, I'd think you'd jump at the chance."

"Sorry," Dasomov quickly apologized. He paused for a moment. It was true that normally he would take up such an offer, and he wanted to keep getting those opportunities because it gave him an edge over competitors. Clearly, Dasomov thought, sleep was speaking first. Another moment of thought granted him a better answer. "You're right, I do normally jump at the chance. At the moment, I've had a short night, so I'm still recovering."

"Ah, I see."

"Give me a while. I'd like a look at it, but I need a couple more hours and a good breakfast."

"Sure, sure! Think it over. I'll make the necessary arrangements so you can have a look at it today. I shouldn't say this, but the big boys are looking to slip you some extra moolah if the bird doesn't chirp, if you know what I'm saying."

"Yeah," confirmed Dasomov. Ethical or not, Dasomov wasn't about to turn down money under the table, especially if it came directly from the corporate executives - the people least likely to bust you because this time, they were passing the cookies out of the jar.

"I'll talk to you later," closed the exec.

"Done," said Dasomov.

The call ended. Dasomov slipped the hand-held dialogue enabler back into its designated pant pouch.

"Time for breakfast," he said.

At that Dasomov strolled along the walkway towards an eatery he loved but seldom visited due to lack of feminine company. _One day_ , he thought, _things in my life will work out, and I'll eat here more often._ Today was only an exception, and upon paying the check for a few scrumptious morsels of filled poultry shells, Dasomov returned to his apartment and the busy, single life contained within its walls.


	18. 18

## 2018:05:08:09:05 - Real Life: 23rd Division Headquarters, Moscow, Russia

Decadent stone archways outlined the barred windows of a three story building, each carved out in a fashion that paid tribute to the Greeks and Romans from whom both the buildings and its occupants took inspiration. It was architecturally encased in a period of history that had seen two great wars, and the busy minds inside greyed its walls with their unending concern with the coming of a third.

In one of the more cozy rooms, Colonel Boris Molotov of the KGB sat on the plushy cushion of a comfortable arm-chair by the fireplace, sipping from a hefty mug a draught with the flavor of a mulled cider mixed with vodka. Standing near the pale white stone mantle over the fireplace stood Lieutenant Evgeni Krasnikov, eying with interest the trickle of embers riding the hot air away from their birthplace like surfers tossed about with the tide.

Boris and Evgeni had been busy conversing and were now settling into the drone of half-slumber that follows any hearty toast of Russian ale. Boris wanted another splash of something with a more relaxing flavor, but Evgeni had enough trouble aligning his posture with the coat hanger rod standing by the door.

A number of minutes passed. Evgeni looked up from the fire at a ship in a bottle displayed atop the mantle.

"Feeling better?" asked Boris.

Evgeni looked towards the floor and ran his hand through his hair. "Some drink."

"I figured you don't get to taste much true Russian vodka in the field of duty," commented Boris.

"This is true," admitted Evgeni, "And in some ways, I can't tell if that's good or bad. I did like the drink, but time away from it..."

"You can't handle it so well, eh?" finished Boris.

Evgeni shook his head. "I think I'll be alright now."

"Good! You have always stood up to challenges well," said Boris with a slightly optimistic tone. It was a gesture of humor and sarcasm, as mixed and flavorful as the drink he know enjoyed. He knew full well the Lieutenant would need another couple minutes to return to himself. Even still, something in Boris sliced away at his patience. Duty was duty, and time was time. It was his fault for dragging things on with this little celebration, but as a stubborn commander, he could never admit that.

Evgeni scratched behind his ear and made a few other hand motions. Boris felt that these indicated the raising of awareness to a sufficient state since itches were but menial things.

"Are you ready to talk?" said Boris.

"I suppose," said Evgeni, not aware that Boris was impatient and expected a full return to senses.

"Excellent," said Boris. "Seeing as you were so successful with your previous mission, I have something relatively important to assign you with this time."

"Hopefully not making a cocktail with the Volga," mumbled Evgeni.

"Not at all," replied Boris, chuckling a hint just to keep Evgeni comfortable. "This assignment should be easy but it is of the utmost interest."

"Where is it?" inquired Evgeni.

"Here in Russia."

"Oh? Not Poland?"

"We have already assigned someone to the Poland case. You're work is done there. You should be grateful considering that the dirty work lies ahead, but it's all grunt work, monotonous things that you aren't talented at doing anyways." Boris sighed. Even with all of the training Evgeni had undergone and even with all of the missions accomplished, Boris saw him only as the perfect tool in progress... in progress, never complete, never perfect. The excuse of being human was unacceptable. Boris thought the only solution was well-roundedness from a variety of missions.

"Do our agents there have all of the information I relayed to the general?" asked Evgeni.

"They do, unless you excluded something."

Evgeni was silent. There were secrets in every mission, and as long as a few were kept, a Russian agent knew he would never be disposed of for reasons of "uselessness". Silence was not a denial of keeping secrets nor of withholding them. It was the perfect answer by being not one at all.

As much as he may have been interested in the details hidden in his subordinate's mind, Boris knew choking out the details would only waste his tool, and he knew Evgeni knew he thought that.

So Boris moved on with the conversation. "This new mission begins online."

Evgeni said nothing.

"According to rumors, it appears a band of Russian hackers has managed to steal the coveted source code of one of the world's most popular games."

Evgeni raised an eyebrow.

"This game caused several children in Japan to lose consciousness. It is said to have caused several train wrecks and other nationwide calamities in Japan. It is even said to have produced the ultimate artificial intelligence to rule the internet. The name of the game is The World."

"I assume headquarters wants to capture this artificial intelligence unit?"

"Not quite, but that is an option if possible. The primary objective is simply obtaining the source code. It would be better to rewrite this intelligence unit in favor of Russian interests than to try to capture the unit in the wild and retrain it."

"And what do we know about the situation?"

"Nothing."

Evgeni was surprised.

"We know nothing," continued Boris. "It is only a rumor, but a rumor has origins. I want you to find out what you can about this rumor and track it down. If it is true, then the code for this game lies somewhere in Russia... somewhere within our reach."

Evgeni turned to look at Boris.

"As our most resourceful agent, I trust you will not disappoint."

Evgeni saluted and departed.

At that, Boris took one last sip of his concoction but coughed it back into the cup after swallowing it down the wrong throat.


	19. 19

## 2018:05:08:10:01 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

 _*Clunk clunk*_ went the sound of thumb-sized metal bulb fixed upon a rotating level three-quarters of the way up the center of the front door. On either side of the door stood two bright bulbs equally as hard-headed.

Dasomov opened the door to find his cutely dressed niece wearing a brilliant red hoodie, fur-necked leather boots, and a coat of many colors.

"To the day," said Anastasia, smiling broadly.

"To the day," echoed Dasomov. He stepped aside and let her in.

Anastasia sniffed the air and cringed. "What is that awful smell?"

"Man," replied Dasomov. He walked into the kitchenette and motioned her to follow. "Can I get you a drink?"

"No thank you," she answered. "Do you think we might go somewhere with a more agreeable odor?"

Dasomov sighed. _Same as ever_ , he thought. "For confidentiality, no. But if you're can tolerate a couple minutes in the privacy of my abode, I might treat you to somewhere special."

"Oh goody," said Anastasia with muffled excitement.

Dasomov pulled out a can of beer from the refrigerator, popped the cap, and started chugging without closing the fridge door. After a couple gulps, he stuck the can back in and let the door shut as he walked into the living room.

The pair of relatives settled into relatively comfortable sitting postures on a seat of their choice: Dasomov in his desk chair and Anastasia on the couch.

Anastasia sighed. "You don't ever wash this couch, do you?"

Dasomov tossed his head around like a giraffe and added in his carefree manner, "It is what it is. I live."

Anastasia eyed him unamused for a second before rolling her pupils in disapproval. "You aren't going to win a girl friend this way, you know."

"I don't expect to, no. I gave up that idea some time ago."

Anastasia frowned. For a half minute, she held her expression and contemplated on the matter. Here was her uncle, a cool guy, a fun guy, someone who willingly spent hours with his nieces and nephews to teach them fascinating new things, new tricks, new gizmos, new ideas. If anyone was deserving of a worthy companion, surely - in the eyes of his star-struck niece - he was. Could anyone see what this child saw?

"I'm fine," said Dasomov in a soft, light-hearted, explanatory way.

"What ever happened to that Korean you were dating?" asked Anastasia.

"My Korean is terrible."

"Could she have learned Russian?"

"That wouldn't be right." He paused. "If I can't learn Korean, she's not going to be able to learn Russian."

"You're terrible at languages."

"What gives you that idea?"

"You can't even learn the Japanese needed to understand the code base," retorted Anastasia. She giggled.

"I suppose."

"You suppose?" Anastasia smiled big in disbelief and briefly looked up at the ceiling as one would when watching a short child claim they would escape their playpen.

"I'll figure it out," claimed Dasomov. "I've figured out enough to add an admin panel."

"Oh yes, because A-DO-MI-N was super hard to figure out."

"It entailed more than that, and you should know that by now."

"Of course! But you didn't need any HEH-ROO-POO finding the PASUWADO."

Anastasia's contagious smile slowly slid onto Dasomov's face. He resisted for a time, but what reason did he have to refuse joy? The possibility of embarrassment was not worth the fear it invoked, yet it held fast with the grip of a mountain climber along a cliff-side, waiting for the sudden slip and release.

Anastasia continued, "I can just see you looking through the code base. You might say to yourself, 'What could "ASSETSU" mean?' Or what about, 'RISOOSU'?"

"Yes, there was some very Anglicized text."

Anastasia continued teasing for a short time until they found themselves at a moment of silence. Dasomov wasn't very good at carrying on chit-chat off line, and he wasn't ready to share any more intimate details of his personal life with his niece even if she was his closest relative.

The conversation finally turned to the game when Dasomov casually changed the subject with a question. "Did you ever find out anything about Mikmik?"

"Huh?" Anastasia was caught off-guard. She paused for a moment. "Um... No. He's a slippery type. There's nothing about him on other forums. It seems he only ever used the username Mikmik on the game forum where you met him."

"Darn," Dasomov hunched over and looked at the floor in quiet dismay. His mind raced with possibilities, each one passing his mind being worse than the one before it. A couple minutes passed.

Jumping into the silence, Anastasia commented, "Did you ever figure out how Mobashem turns victims into those weird corpse thingies?"

"No. Not yet at least."

"Maybe there's a way to reverse the process," Anastasia advised.

Dasomov paused to reflect on this. If it was possible to reverse the process, then the consciousness of Mikmik could be restored. However, what had happened to the real body of the user while time passed? If it wasn't in the hospital, it would be dead by now, and it would make no sense to reverse the process if that were even possible. In that case, would it be possible to transfer the consciousness of Mikmik into some other avatar? And more importantly, how did the game control all of these mechanics? Was there something metaphysical about the game? But even more important: Was Mikmik even captured? Or did he try returning to the forum under a new username and try to request permission?

Dasomov turned to his computer. "I haven't checked my forum messages lately."

Anastasia, completely excluded from Dasomov's thoughts, was confused. "What's that have to do with reversing the process?"

"Mikmik might not even be in the game. He may have signed up on the old forum under a new user account and made a request to join. I have no way of knowing if the people requesting to join are him, but it's a possibility?"

"Wouldn't he remember his forum password and log in as the same user though?"

"Maybe, but sometimes people want a new username altogether because they use it for multiple accounts."

Anastasia sheepishly looked up to the ceiling with a guilty whistle caught in her throat.

Dasomov accessed the forum on his computer and browsed around for anyone who looked like Mikmik. No one. He tried a search on the forum. The only posts regarding Mikmik appeared to had been all made by Mikmik, no one else. Finally, in desperation, Dasomov wrote a new topic post on the forum reading:

"Subject: Mikmik

Body: Anyone know where Mikmik is or who they are? If anyone has information regarding them, please post."

Anastasia stopped him from posting it. "I just did that."

"You did?" asked Dasomov, surprised.

Anastasia pointed him to a week-old topic with the same topic title. "From what people posted, no one knows who he was or where he lived. Maybe someone has posted recently?"

Dasomov opened the last page of the thread. There a discussion had started over a certain store chain. Dasomov wasn't familiar with it, and it all seemed rather meaningless, so he loaded the next to last page of the thread. Then he and Anastasia saw midway down the page a post that spoke about the store chain and it being a place Mikmik likely visited based on purchases he spoke of making.

The store itself may have meant nothing, but as a security expert, it was a great hint to Dasomov.

"If I can hack that store's database, I might get a record of purchasers."

"By several million people," Anastasia noted.

"True, but it might help triangulate the data," Dasomov argued.

"I suppose."

"In any case, we won't work on this now. It's getting close to lunch. How would you like a surprise?"

"Goody!" squeaked Anastasia.

For lunch, Dasomov led his niece down to a little eatery he loved and seldom visited. Anastasia commented that it was a treat for the both of them, but Dasomov said nothing. He didn't need to. For the sake of his niece, it was special today too.


	20. 20

## 2018:05:09:20:03 - Real Life: Pavel's Room

The attractive and repulsive forces between hot-heads defied analogy to magnets. Relatively obscure artificial substances might obey physics remotely resembling these personality peculiarities, but the truth was hidden by the unfathomable complexity of grey matter. And so it was that two boisterous boys chose to room together for what appeared to outsiders as the mutual reasons of minimizing expenses and having companionship.

On the west half of the room were islands of floor leading up to mounds of clothing, cushions, magazines, and various other articles of amusement that as a whole provided the land pad claimed by Pavel. On the east half, where corners of a bed were more readily visible, the other occupant made his roost.

What began as a delightful friendship fizzled into a casual acquaintance as employment demanded more of each man's time. Less and less they saw each other, and more and more they sought community in other ways. But when they did connect, there were always exciting times to be had. Pavel would pull out a couple mugs and his room mate would pull out a pistol, and the two would play mischievous little games with an empty cartridge, a dart board, and thin fishing wire. Then they would party to some loud music by bands with names easily mistaken for rejected 80's movie titles. After the fun was over, Pavel's roommate would retire to the shower and Pavel would go check the chat logs.

It was about that time on this particular night when Pavel noticed Doslad back on chat. Speaking under his alias Xil-Sta, he decided to jump on the opportunity of their leader's return to fill his ear with tales of _The World_. He opened a private chat window.

Xil-Sta: "Captain!"

Doslad: "Yes, I'm back. Busy with work."

Xil-Sta: "Good news! Zontna and company cracked the logging problem."

Doslad: "Good. I think he'll tell me that, though."

Xil-Sta: "I know, but I have more news."

Doslad: "Spill it."

Xil-Sta: "I scoured the internet high and low and finally came upon the secrets to our monster's utterances."

Doslad: "What are you talking about?"

Xil-Sta: "Mobashem!"

Doslad: "What about it?"

Doslad: "Mobashem the monster, you mean?"

Xil-Sta: "Exactly! Mobashem is the legendary Guardian of Land's End from the Epitaph of Twilight, the guardian encountered by Saya and her companions when they were searching for the Twilight Dragon."

Doslad: "And you know this how?"

Xil-Sta: "The monster Mobashem spoke a few lines from the Epitaph. I found these lines posted by someone with the alias Faerkinder. They also had various other fragments of the Epitaph."

Doslad: "What's the fragment Mobashem spoke? I don't recall."

Xil-Sta: "Mobashem spoke a slightly modified version, but the original is this: The tail swipes. Sky is scarred; Constellations crumble. What eye shall not fail to behold Land's End? None pass the vigilant guard!"

Doslad: "Interesting."

Xil-Sta: "Of course, the monster said it in first-person, so it was talking about itself."

Doslad: "First-person? What do you mean?"

Xil-Sta: "It said, 'None pass my vigilant guard' or something like that."

Doslad: "I see."

Xil-Sta: "There's more. Mobashem said something before that, which I think was the line: 'There is no retreat. The tactician swallows painful defeat. A brainchild is born dead With noose encircling its neck.' Same source, btw."

Doslad: "That doesn't sound familiar."

Xil-Sta: "I kept track of it. Trust me."

Doslad: "Mhm. How's the back-story coming?"

Xil-Sta: "Perfect. It even has a figure skater!"

A beat passed.

Xil-Sta: "She's the wife of our beloved Zontna, who stars as the Wing of Ares."

Doslad: "There's no Ares in Norse mythology much less that of The World."

Xil-Sta: "But that's fine! We'll give him a whole new heavenly realm where we the admins dictate the events of the common folk."

Doslad: "I was hoping for more expanding onto the original story after the events of the Epitaph."

There was a pause.

Xil-Sta: "What about a renewal of the impending doom of the Epitaph?"

Doslad: "That would be interesting."

Xil-Sta: "I can do that. I can make it totally epic."

Doslad: "Do that. Let me know when you've got an outline and I'll have a peek at it."

Xil-Sta: "Aye, aye, captain!"

With that, the conversation in the private chat window ended.


	21. 21

In the original game, the backstory revolved around _The Epitaph of Twilight_ , a tale concerning Saya the little witch, called a shadowed one, and her companion sprites in search of the famous Twilight Dragon would would stop the Accursed Wave from destroying all. Despite the inevitable doom spoken about in the epic tale, the story itself was never completed, and only fragments of it remained by the time anyone took interest. Followers and readers of Emma Wieland began posting their fragments as interest grew (primarily due to the popularity of _The World_ as a game). However, the accuracy of such postings were sketchy, and it was common for typos and "personal interpretation" to create errors in the transcriptions and translations.

The most notable collection of fragments in Eastern Europe belonged to Faerkinder, an otherwise anonymous author of a low-budget website with historical articles and transcriptions of fantasy novels. In all, there were thirty six fragments of _The Epitaph_ on his website, some commonly known, some mysterious, and some with suspect accuracy.

When Pavel encountered this great collection, he gobbled up the contents and began shaping an alternative story for _The World Neuvo_ , knowing full well that the other hackers were likely to reject his first rendition. The waltzing of ballerinas and the calligraphy of an ape tribe with Mongolian features were unsuitable for the cultures of the factions of a fantasy game originally revolving around the destruction of sprites. _Perhaps,_ Pavel thought, _I could still combine these new cultures in the factions that evolved after the fall of sprites._ Had the sun fallen and smashed into the Pacific Ocean, vaporizing every drop of water, it would have failed to enhanced the creative writing power of this D-Rated Dostoevsky. Beer games were easy, but a fantasy world was intangible, whimsical, dreamy. Had all of his best ideas been written on sticky notes above the latest book he was reading when they came to him, their correlation with the attractive components of each book would have been unquestionable. Fortunately, Pavel did read enough to attract unmarried librarians, and he had collected a basket of decent ideas to employ when had completed the initial stages of story writing, including world building. Consequently, the collection of Faerkinder - regardless of their accuracy - made invaluable source material for Pavel.

Of all of the fragments of _The Epitaph_ on the website of Faerkinder, the greatest ones of interest concerned those commonly associated with Land's End. If Mobashem was the "Guardian of Land's End" as Pavel believed, then perhaps these particular fragments would provide a clue. Pavel found four fragments in the category of interest - two that seemed fairly well known and two of mysterious origins.

The first of the well-known fragments was uttered by Mobashem, and a popular transcription was relayed to Dasomov by Pavel.

The second of the well-known fragments Pavel believed alluded to a monster that intercepted the protagonist and her companions at the edge of the "Keel Mountains" (Dragonbein, referring to bones of the dragon that pulled the sun god). The translation went like so:

 _Past the falls, before the gigantic stone carcass,_

 _stood weary followers three._

" _Tread lightly, remain awake", begged Fili,_

" _lest night creep feast_

 _and slumber be found within belly of beast!"_

 _Jaws open when eyes close,_

 _and here be the scavenger,_

 _devouring the lost and wanderer._

Of the two mysterious fragments, one Pavel identified as fan-made due to the obvious writing style. A quick internet search revealed that it fit perfectly within a fan-made rewrite of _The Epitaph_ story. The second fragment, however, was greatly confusing. Pavel dismissed this as merely the poor translation into Russian because rereading its words over and over again to himself didn't make its meaning any clearer. For a couple of nights, he rehashed its lines over and over to himself in his sleep.

 _Frozen stones, frozen more_

 _Her wake as hostile as her face._

 _The chase continues through the deepest of caverns._

 _The eye of the guardian penetrates the dark;_

 _Swiftly following until duty's end._

 _What is the "duty"?_ he wondered. In ten minute intervals, he awaken and ponder this question until his eyes could open no more. As the darkness filled Pavel's eyes, the shroud of mystery grew thicker.


	22. 22

## 2018:05:12:06:38 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

Nearly two weeks had passed since the first raid before someone reported the needed vulnerability for hacking the logging code. One of the lesser active hackers who had contributed to the hooks for the administrator panel also knew just enough about Romaji and English to piece together the information necessary for identifying the logging code written in Japanese. According to his report, some meshes were loaded dynamically, and that the buffer in which the meshes were stored would hold a large amount of ignored data if a termination sequence to the mesh were given prior to the end. The data between the mesh termination sequence and the true end of the buffer could contain crafted data. If the data was crafted correctly, then when the mesh was sent to the logging mechanism, the otherwise ignored data (now crafted) could be used to print the contents of the values of variables in the logging mechanism and - once these values were obtained - be used to assign new values to these variables, including making it possible to enable the debugging printing of otherwise "secret" items. It was necessary to first obtain existing values because some of the values would mess up the system if overridden by the wrong value. But in any case, the vulnerability provided just the hole they needed.

The rest of the codebase remained a mystery, but Dasomov was excited to announce that would change soon with the arrival of team member Fusota-ri, a half-Russian, half-Japanese software developer who learned about the secret game project from a coworker. After a short interview, Dasomov thought his personality would fit nicely within the group with the exception of his incessant complaining about the lack of proper multi-lingual support in their current chat system. As long as the complaints weren't registered at an irritatingly high frequency, Dasomov would let them dribble in with all of the other complaints and requests on the bug feeds. And thus they did and not a minute after the group had been introduced to the new ninja.

One particularly exhausting morning, Dasomov joined the chat to find it crowded with comments concerning text support.

Zontna: "He's quite the picky personality, isn't he? Not only Japanese, he wants that silly Malaysian fonts for emoticons."

q5corbo: "Ecclectic tastes, you mean."

Zontna: "*those"

Xil-Sta: "Eclectic."

Zontna: "No."

Xil-Sta: "Sounds radical. XD"

A number of other comments by various members followed. Dasomov stared at the ruckus for a minute before the chirping of a swallow outside his window alerted him of reality. He shook his head and began punching at the symbols on his flat and faithful servant.

Doslad: "I want good news, people. 1 Where's Jyos? 2 Any information on Mikmik's whereabouts? 3 How many people are ready for today's raid?"

q5corbo was the first to reply. "I'm ready!"

Xil-Sta: "Jyos may still be in bed. I think he worked overtime yesterday."

Doslad: "And you know this how?"

Xil-Sta: "We're actually friends now."

A gargoyle appeared on Dasomov's screen. Dasomov tried to ignore it, but as long as nothing was entered into the chat window, it would remain in center view and remain visible still longer until enough messages had cleared the screen of its smiling face. New dreams make nightmares disappear, so why not a simple topic change?

Doslad: "Any information on Mikmik?"

Tovia: "There was a story that originally aired TV Barrandov."

There was a pause. Word by word, Dasomov mouthed out to himself the grim news in Tovia's continued chat post:

"It spoke about a mysterious coma incident related to gaming, which involved a twenty-something-year-old man."

The chat room was silent.

Suddenly, the buzz of the morning was fighting an army of midday ghosts and cowering in the shadows.

TV Barrandov was one of the primary news providers in the Czech Republic. If what Anastasia had said was true, then the person behind Mikmik was a twenty-something-year-old male in Czechoslovakia. Even though there was no proof that the news story was about him, the coincidence was frighteningly undeniable.

Doslad: "Did it say anything else?"

Tovia: "I assume there's more information in the original story. The Russian version was extremely terse."

Dasomov knew better than to ask Anastasia to read the original. She always claimed her Russian was too precious to risk tainting with influences from "inferior breeds".

q5corbo finally chimed in: "The good news is, they found the guy!"

Tovia: "Yes, they found him. However, I can't say what state he was in."

q5corbo: "Alive, maybe?"

Tovia: "Maybe."

Doslad: "We'll go on that hunch. In any case, we have a raid to perform. But first, if you haven't yet, grab a quick breakfast."


	23. 23

## 2018:05:12:07:00 - The World Neuvo: μ Capture Zone Wiessa

Everything was set up perfectly - network tracking daemons, a carefully crafted mesh to be loaded for hacking the logging code, and several hackers monitoring the game's output with their admin panels at the ready.

For step one, the hackers playing the game as part of the raid were instructed to log into the game through the test server and convene in **μ Capture Zone Wiessa**.

Over chat, Brofin was the first to report in. "Reached the rendezvous point. Awaiting orders."

Gemphl: "I see you. Kellei?"

Brofin: "He had to leave. Something came up."

Tovia: "I'm here."

Gemphl: "I see you."

Tovia: "Is this all of us?"

Gemphl: "For today, it seems. q5corbo lost his avatar and decided to wait on setting up another one until we could figure out how to recover his username."

Tovia: "Why can't he pick something new, like Tankman?"

Gemphl: "Try saying that in a higher pitch to yourself and see how it sounds."

There was a pause.

Tovia: "Wow. I just realized what you meant."

Gemphl: "Good. Let's continue, shall we?"

Brofin: "Your orders, sir?"

Gemphl: "Waiting on the cue from Zontna."

Zontna: "Go ahead. Everything is all set."

Gemphl: "Let's go."

With that, the three jumped to the home of their daunted foe.

## 2018:05:12:07:03 - The World Neuvo: Θ Dun Loireag

The three hackers warped into the realm with no sudden surprises. Everything was under the spell of an eerie calm, but as their apprehensive ears adjusted to the quiet, the hackers relaxed into their usual selves.

Tovia: "It seems to be hiding again. Looks like Japanese monsters are just chickens."

Gemphl: "It'll come out once your admin panel is loaded. Brofin, you first."

Tovia: "But I..."

Gemphl: "I'd like Brofin to try it. He hasn't been seen as a cheater yet by Krikle, so it might treat him differently."

Brofin placed a plant in the world.

Tovia: "Wait! Did you load your admin panel to create that plant just now?"

Brofin: "Affirmative."

Tovia: "Then..."

There was nothing. The land was blanketed with the spell of an eerie calm. For a moment, the hackers contemplated on what this meant in relation to what they knew. All of their thoughts of the past few weeks came to mind, going back to that fateful day in April.

Gemphl: "Ok, Tovia. Your turn."

Not a minute later, the sky began to turn red and the old familiar dance of doom played out before their eyes. Appearing in the clouds was a great coffin bearing in bold characters one word:

"CONDEMNATION".

Tovia began to shake. Dasomov noticed and eyed her for a minute. Tovia's eyes were fixated on the coffin as it slowly opened and revealed the virtual vampire. Dasomov was perplexed. Then it hit him. _Could it be that...? Did she lie to me? Is she wearing...?_ He scrambled to race a message into chat.

Doslad: "Tovia, OFF NOW!"

No reply.

One by one, the seconds ticked away with agonizing pace.

Doslad: "Tovia! LOG OFF!"

Still no reply.

A few seconds later, Zontna, unaware of the impending crisis, announced a victory.

Zontna: "We've done it! We got the logging information pumping out! We're done here, so let's try to make it leave and watch how it does so."

q5corbo: "Tovia? What's wrong, Doslad?"

The chat room fell into the spell of an eerie silence.

Little by little, the avatar of Tovia floated towards Mobashem. Brofin, who had already turned off his admin panel, stood and watched the drama unfold with the befuddlement of a blossom in winter.

Brofin: "Sir? Anyone? Is this supposed to be happening?"

Gemphl: "Brofin, see if you can grab Tovia and pull her away!"

Brofin promptly did as ordered but found the task impossible to perform. After grabbing Tovia's arms and yanking with all his might, Brofin only found himself dragged along with her hovering body.

Brofin: "Sir, I can't move her. She's just about to fall off the edge too."

The hackers waited a moment. A few seconds later, Brofin announced more bad news: "She's transforming, sir! Her avatar is turning grey and levitating."

Dasomov could only listen.

## 2018:05:12:07:11 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

When he finally returned to his senses, Dasomov rushed to his phone and dialed the home phone of his niece. Dasomov took a deep breath. First a ring, then another ring, and then another. The maid answered, "Yashenko residence."

"This is Dasomov."

In a slow, prim voice the elderly maid replied, "Greetings, sir."

"Will you put my niece on the phone?" Dasomov began. He stuttered. If he sounded too concerned, he might hint at his entire scheme - the game, Anastasia's involvement, the servers, everything! He had to be calm. He needed an excuse. "There's something I wanted to discuss with her."

"Is it urgent, sir?" inquired the maid, sensing the jitter in Dasomov's voice.

"Yes, in a way," Dasomov began. "I found a contest she would love to enter, but the deadline is very soon."

"Very well, sir. I will inform her as soon as she comes down for breakfast," said the maid, trying to end the conversation.

"I'd like to share with her the details. Would you please call her to the phone?" insisted Dasomov.

The maid was starting to become irritated. She didn't personally like Dasomov for reasons the latter could only imagine. Moreover, he was interrupting her morning cleaning duties. Nevertheless, her employers demanded she at least tolerate calls from relatives as much as they did, which was on a semi-annual basis, no more.

The maid sighed. "I will check on her sir, but no guarantees."

"Thank you," replied Dasomov.

## 2018:05:12:07:19 - Real Life: Anastasia's Room

 _*knock knock*_ The beautiful white door shuttered at the banging on its beams. An echo could be heard inside the chamber behind it, but were there ears to hear?

"My dear," groaned the maid, "your uncle is on the phone."

There was no response.

"And you have not had your breakfast yet."

Again she waited, but the carefree calls of the princess were not to be found.

Finally, the maid decided to check. Perhaps Anastasia was already downstairs, eating. She opened the door, and when its knob had reached a gap of two heads width from the post, the maid was able to peek around and observe the setting. The first thing in view was the window wall. There was an unchanged calendar, still reporting the time as last month, and on the sill was a small plant, barely growing. Next in view was the large teddy bear beside the bed. As the maid's vision panned across the bed, she saw a laptop lying on its face in a mound of blankets. Given the bumpy mess, it was difficult to tell if a body hid inside.

The maid stepped into the room and called out again, "My dear?"

Around the corner, she heard a faint oscillating sound coming from the private bathroom. She trod into the room and stepped softly through it until she could see around the bend.

There, arched over the sink, was Anastasia. She was breathing heavy as if having just seen a ghost. She turned to look at the maid, revealing her pale face and rounded mouth. In her eyes gleamed a thousand fears.

"My dear!" exclaimed the maid in a hushed but startled voice. "What happened?"


	24. 24

## 2018:05:12:07:23 - Real Life: Yegor's House

"Suspicion confirmed," Brofin announced over chat.

Yegor was pleased. From his point of view, the mission was a total success with the exception of one of their beta-testers losing their avatar. Regardless, they would get it back. The logging information was pumping out to files, and to this data-starved analyst, it appeared as acres of fresh watermelons ready to be picked. There was a great deal of sorting to do, but in the meantime, he needed to get back to work.

Being the top man in his department merited exceptional trust from his superiors, but it wouldn't be long before they would notice his tardiness had become routine. Thus, on this partly-cloudy morning, Yegor grabbed a quick bite to eat and jogged out the door.

His house was situated behind a couple of newer structures - a convenience store and an ever-changing business - that had both been built without Yegor's notification much less consent. He didn't mind so much since they left for him a path of crumbling concrete blocks between the two buildings.

The path lead out to a sidewalk where his abrupt appearance would frighten and surprise passersby like a magician reappearing on stage after leaving the theater. From there, it would follow a slightly winding path up a gentle slope and hug the main road that connected the many structures on the rim of town.

The strolls along the slope were relaxing for Yegor due to the many short trees that grew near the road. Every now and then, he would pause to watch one of them grow and contemplate on how all of the many droplets of water had gathered from around the globe just to water the tree. He would imagine the mechanics and see each speck of sap as a data point. There was nothing that was not data to Yegor. He would smile and take a breath, knowing his exhaled wind would be feeding the foliage.

Once he arrived at work, havoc would hit his ears and he would have to call out to calm the storm. Everyone would turn their attention to him for a moment and suddenly pretend to know what they were doing, as if he were never needed. Yegor blamed this on everyone having a chip on their shoulder, which in the morning would lead to arguing and then would cease after he arrived once everyone saw the Duke of Data arrive. In the past, he had made not less than a handful of them feel like children.

Yegor never thought of himself as the best. There were plenty of programmers in Russia, some of whom had won awards - more than Yegor could ever say. But he had his corner of the world. Still, something nagged him to get out of it. He had hoped to escape with a new job, but perhaps something less real would suffice.

"Yegor!" called out his colleague. "I've found you a new opportunity... if you're willing to travel."

 _This is new_ , thought Yegor. Suddenly his thoughts twirled in a spiral. An unusually sickening feeling crept into his gut that blended unparalleled enthusiasm, the joy of success in a digital dream, and the frightening possibility of losing both. _Working on The World was a success this morning, but don't I want a new job?_ , he thought.

"The job is located in the United States! ... I think."

"Is it or isn't it?" Yegor inquired.

"Um... Well, the guy offering the job is an American. His name is Anakin Sullivan. He's a recruiter for one of those tech firms on the American west coast."

Suddenly the job didn't sound so amusing. Yegor hadn't been to the United States, and while he didn't believe the propaganda on television, he was aware of the endless complications in moving anywhere out of Russia.

"And this job is?" inquired Yegor.

"Data scientist, of course. What else? That's how I found the guy."

"I see."

There was an awkward minute of silence between the two men as Yegor contemplated on the matter. Finally, the other man spoke up.

"If you don't want it, that's fine, but you always seem interested in looking for something else. I won't look anymore if you don't want me to."

Losing opportunities was definitely not what Yegor wanted, so against his personal interests, he decided taking a chance was better than asking his colleague to search again after having just turned him down. Yegor was well aware that having one's work rejected led to loss of motivation, resulting in future results being worse.

"No, no, it's fine. America isn't my first choice, but get me in touch with the guy and maybe he'll have something else for me. Thanks. I appreciate you looking."

"No problem!" said the colleague, and that's just the optimism Yegor wanted to hear.

In a few days, Yegor would hear from that most intrepid of entrepreneurial types, that phenom of the phone, calling direct from his headquarters in sunny California, the one, the only, Anakin Sullivan.


	25. 25

## 2018:05:12:07:25 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

With his ear pressed firmly against the phone, Dasomov could faintly here the drama unfold at his niece's residence. The old maid yelled, and though the sound of her yell wouldn't scare a crow, Dasomov shuddered. _She could be brain dead. Oh, God! What have I done?!_ The middle-aged man paced away his life in a tight circle no more than four feet in diameter with his hands on his head, still gripping the phone. After a few minutes, someone hung up the phone. No explanation was needed, thought Dasomov. He set his phone down on his desk and got down on his knees to stare at the floor. His mind raced. _I've lost two people... and on a game. How could I have done this? I've failed to protect the people who entrusted themselves to me._ He leaned up and eyed his computer monitor with a mixed expression of hatred, wonder, and awe. _What is this game? Is this game cursed?_

In the refrigerator, there awaited his arrival a bottle of the stuff that makes you forget bad times and replaces them with a new kind of headache the day after. Though unseen, it called out to him as a demon tempting its prey. _No! No!_ Dasomov refused even as he glanced back to eye the fridge. _You've failed,_ returned the thought. _You have lost a loved one already. The cost is too great._ The thought of failure continued to pierce him. He had to press on with the mission. If he didn't, then everything else would have been done for nothing. But if he continued, then he might lose even more people. What hurt worse most was losing the only family member he knew who actually played the game. Her smiling face from four days ago was still fresh in memory. _How much more are you going to risk for a game? You killed your own niece!_ Without moving his head, his eyes wandered the walls and took him on a voyage in the direction of the kitchen.

"No!" he shouted.

Dasomov took a deep breath and opened up the chat window. He needed to change gears fast. Finding out what was going on might help. If anything was to be done about Anastasia, they could do it empowered by the new data that Yegor had just logged.

"Sorry, Doslad," apologized Brofin. "Zontna just left. I think he had work."

Dasomov replied as his usual Doslad: "That's ok. I'll have a look at the logs myself to see if I can glean anything. Did you get to see how the monster left."

Brofin: "Yes, sir. It returned to its carriage and departed in a similar manner to how it came. I dare say it's part of the area in which we found it."

Doslad: "Good. Thank you. I guess this confirms the theory Jyos proposed."

Some other chatter ensued after that, but Dasomov wasn't interested. He desperately wanted to load up the logs saved by Zontna, but he could sense his mind giving in to the beckoning of the booze. So he decided to go sit down for a short meal where the liquor was too pricey to be a bother. A second breakfast wasn't truly justified eaten alone, and since he needed to get some work done, he decided to grab some of his papers and invite along another colleague from work.

## 2018:05:12:10:02 - Real Life: Cosmonauts Embankment, Saratov, Russia

After a miserable morning trying to get work done, Dasomov parted ways with his fellow employee and decided to take a nap before heading out for a short walk to clear his mind. The clouds overhead combined with the rushing wind kept the temperature feeling brisk despite the forecast of warmth the next week. Maybe today was just one of those unlucky days, Dasomov thought.

He sat on a bench overlooking the water and contemplated on what would come next. First, he would try to get some work done for a few more hours. That would continue the work of this morning to clear his mind. Then he might have a sip of vodka around 3 for a break. He would continue until dinner, have a can of vodka, and get to work studying the logs. Another can wouldn't hurt, there would it? Dasomov started to note the frequency of his thoughts of alcohol.

 _I don't need it,_ he told himself. On the bright side, he thought, no one in Anastasia's family would find out that it was his doing. The pleasantness of that thought turned sour as he realized how selfish it was.

Just then, his cell phone rang. He looked at the number and a feeling of guilt crawled up his gut. YASHENKO.


	26. 26

## 2018:05:12:11:48 - Real Life: Cosmonauts Embankment, Saratov, Russia

"Dasomov?" The voice of the old maid at the Yashenko residence cackled through the speaker of Dasomov's phone.

"Yes?" responded the nervous hacker.

"I'm sorry to inform you, but your niece has been taken to the hospital."

Dasomov sucked in his breath. His eyes pinched. He had done it. It was all his fault. What would he say now? He could continue to hide it and try to act casual, but the situation at hand was desperate. After a second, he realized he wasn't playing the part. He should be concerned, of course, but be careful not to give away his involvement.

"I'm terribly sorry sir... Sir? Are you still there?" inquired the maid.

The security expert took another breath. "Wha.. What happened?"

"She was traumatized this morning," answered the maid. "She had been playing a game, and it made her all crazy. But don't worry. She's at the hospital now, and her parents are forbidding her from playing it anymore."

"I see." He sighed in relief.

"That is all sir."

"Thank you for informing me. Please send my best wishes."

"That I will, sir."

Dasomov hung up.

It all felt like good news. His niece wasn't trapped in the game and no one suspected him of having anything to do with it. But he knew better. Eventually, Anastasia would start talking, and how much she wanted to reveal was her choice. He wouldn't be off the hook unless she decided to keep her lips sealed, and even then, she could take vengeance at any time. But it was her fault, after all, he thought. She didn't obey his instructions to not use a headset when playing the game. _From now on_ , he resolved, _it's a rule to play at your own risk._ Mikmik had been the exception because no one expected anything tragic during the game rebuilding much less using administrator powers. Everyone was in the know now, and there were no more excuses. Dasomov decided to announce his new rule that evening over chat... after he got some work done.

## 2018:05:12:21:10 - Real Life: Evan's House

Evan stared at his beautiful copper-colored pot of coffee brewing up brown liquid gold, or at least gold in his eyes. In truth, his coffee was more black that his taste-buds preferred, but sugar and cream were luxuries for those with the dough. Even with work today, there was little promise that the poor programmer would enjoy such delightful flavors in the near future.

 _*Sspheeeeeee*_ whistled the coffee pot. Evan picked up the pot and poured it through a filter atop a strainer and into a mug with an interior bearing the dusty remains of a shoreline from refills.

After a few sips, Evan sat back in his chair and began reflecting on the meaning of his life, as he sometimes did. But this led quickly to disappointment, so he opened up the chat app and a new window for Xil-Sta.

"How's the story coming?" he typed.

It took a couple of minutes for Xil-Sta to respond for reasons unknown to Evan.

Xil-Sta: "It's coming great!"

Jyos: "Really?"

Xil-Sta: "I have lots of content now. The trick is finding how to mesh it all together."

Jyos: "So you have some story written?"

Xil-Sta: "Not yet."

Evan rolled his eyes. Perhaps someone else should have been put in charge of the story, he thought. But then again, everyone else thought it was a given and that other tasks were more important.

Ironically, the lack of story showed their own story: over a month in and still disorganized. The assets were all categorized, but new ones were meaningless without a story. Furthermore, incorporating stuff into game play was still difficult. So far, the hackers had figured out how to make static elements and add basic actions, but allowing entities to do anything was a matter of copy and paste from other sources or guess work. Moreover, adding new code or making adjustments was off-limits until Mikmik could be saved and the game restarted.

Jyos: "So what do you have?"

Xil-Sta: "I found this awesome website with lots of fragments of the Epitaph of Twilight. Doslad wanted the game based on the original story."

Jyos: "Yes, and so did the rest of us."

Xil-Sta: "Good, 'cause that's what I got."

Jyos: "So tell me about these fragments."

Xil-Sta: "There's like 30 or so fragments. I even found the one our monster spoke: There is no retreat. The tactician swallows painful defeat. A brainchild is born dead With noose encircling its neck. The tail swipes. Sky is scarred; Constellations crumble. What eye shall not fail to behold Land's End? None pass the vigilant guard!"

Evan carefully read the words aloud to himself. He could see the beat of the fragment play out:

 _There is no retreat._

 _The tactician swallows painful defeat._

 _A brainchild is born dead_

 _With noose encircling its neck._

 _The tail swipes._

 _Sky is scarred; Constellations crumble._

 _What eye shall not fail to behold Land's End?_

 _None pass the vigilant guard!_

Jyos: "I'd been thinking a lot about that lately and about Mobashem."

Xil-Sta: "Brofin thinks were right about it just being for cheaters."

Evan shook his head as he wrote.

Jyos: "It doesn't seem right, though. There's got to be something to this."

Xil-Sta: "What do you mean?"

Jyos: "From what I've read, the original game never mentioned anything about this monster. All of the main monsters in the game were known. Even people who hacked the original game never said anything about this monster."

Xil-Sta: "I couldn't read the forums, so I don't know. I can't read Japanese, can you?"

Jyos: "A tiny bit. Just enough to get by. Translating software helps, but yeah, it's painful."

Xil-Sta: "So how did you find the game?"

Jyos: "Internet sale. You?"

Xil-Sta: "I got my copy from a friend who could read Japanese and was into all that Asian stuff. Haven't seen or heard from him in over a year, but that's life."

Jyos: "So it is."

Xil-Sta: "Alrighty. I want to get back to working on the story while I have time this evening. If you want to check out the fragments, here's the web address: ..."

A URL popped up in the chat window. Evan thanked Xil-Sta and said goodbye before proceeding to open the link.


	27. 27

## 2018:05:12:22:00 - Real Life: Evan's House

Faerkinder's website was a treasure trove of fragments of _The Epitaph of Twilight_ , and Evan spent all evening mulling over them. After Doslad made his announcement about playing at one's own risk, Evan opened a quick chat window and ascertained from him the fragments that Xil-Sta had mentioned as relevant to their search.

In all, Evan singled out six fragments of interest, which he labeled.

The first, the prophecy of Mobashem, he labeled "Trapped Before Land's End":

 _There is no retreat._

 _The tactician swallows painful defeat._

 _A brainchild is born dead_

 _With noose encircling its neck._

 _The tail swipes._

 _Sky is scarred; Constellations crumble._

 _What eye shall not fail to behold Land's End?_

 _None pass the vigilant guard!_

The second concerned the Keel Mountains, but he found it difficult to agree with the interpretation by Xil-Sta as referring to a single monster, so he named it "The Jaws of Keel Mountains":

 _Past the falls, before the gigantic stone carcass,_

 _stood weary followers three._

" _Tread lightly, remain awake", begged Fili,_

" _lest night creep feast_

 _and slumber be found within belly of beast!"_

 _Jaws open when eyes close,_

 _and here be the scavenger,_

 _devouring the lost and wanderer._

The third fragment referred to a pursuit in caverns. While Dun Loireag did have mountains, Mobashem did not at all appear to be a mountain-wandering beast. Thus, Evan rightly assumed it was a different monster. After some perusing, Evan found a tentative outline of the story on the website and realized the fragment probably referred to the chase of Tortets. Consequently, he named the fragment ,"Pursuit of Tortets".

 _Frozen stones, frozen more_

 _Her wake as hostile as her face._

 _The chase continues through the deepest of caverns._

 _The eye of the guardian penetrates the dark;_

 _Swiftly following until duty's end._

From the text, he conjectured that Tortets could freeze things, unlike Mobashem who resorted to cloud missiles and an invisible gravitational field.

The fourth fragment seemed to have to do with the third, but Evan couldn't quite place whether it came before or after the third. He called it, "Cold Tunnel".

 _Chills stroke the travelers abreast,_

 _Traversing these tunnels together._

' _Round the bend,_

 _the secret to land's end._

The fifth clearly spoke about the mountains, but there was no hint of a monster. He named it, "Atop The Mountains".

 _The company ascends the stony path, and strength fades._

 _Eye to horizon, peaks echo their greeting and insult their effort._

 _Who dare climb on the dragon of the Sun 'less they be god?_

 _Climb! Away from fear! But return they must!_

 _Weary ones do descend._

The sixth fragment was hardly relevant in Evan's opinion, but it deserved a name, so he named, "Prayer at the Falls of Arche Koeln". It went like so:

 _Great streams of water, so high and fair, Arche Koeln!_

" _Part in two, show us the way._

 _Lead us to Land's End!"_

 _Begging, praying, Saya kneeling._

 _Coldly rivers flow._

All in all, none of them solved the riddle of the existence of Mobashem. Perhaps someone else online had a better answer. A deeper investigation was needed, and he knew just where to turn: The old game forums. _Tomorrow_ , he thought. _I'll have a look._

Mulling over them for a couple of hours amused Evan and put a smile on his face. There was something invigorating about solving mysteries. Maybe it would have been better had _he_ been in charge of writing the story. On the other hand, the others might still be sorting assets if he hadn't dedicated all those late nights to the job. Evan gave himself an imaginary pat on the back. Then, gazing at text of the fragments on the screen in front of him, he softly uttered, "My turn."


	28. 28

## 2018:5:13:10:11 - Real Life: Patient Room 316, Hospital

"If there's nothing more, then let her go!" demanded a middle-aged man behind the closed doors of a patient's room. A nurse walked into the room to check on the commotion. Inside was a white-vested physician receiving verbal abuse from a man and his woman whose daughter was evidently the subject of dispute.

"Is there something I can do, doctor?" inquired the nurse.

"No, no, I'm afraid not," responded the doctor. "I have been informed a man from the government is coming to pay a visit."

"Why would he want to see our daughter?" demanded the mother.

The doctor sighed and tried to explain. "When I reported to the Bureau of Psychological Health her case, they told me to wait."

"But you're the doctor!" yelled the father.

The pale-faced, elderly medic only grew older by the minute with each nag. Pressed on all sides - by his moral convictions, by his duty to government, by his duty to the child - he could do little more than stress over the situation. His brow began to sweat.

"I'm sorry, I would like to release her.

"Then DO it!" demanded the father.

Just then, a tall, thin man in a black hat and coat briskly stepped into the room as if he himself were a hurried doctor late for an appointment. He swiftly removed his hat and held it over his chest while making a partial bow so tiny even a tree would've considered it disrespectful. He then eyed the girl sitting up in the bed just as all eyes were now on him.

"How are you, young lady?"

"Fine...," the girl mumbled.

Her father eyed the man with suspicion and asked, "How dare you bust in here? Who are you?"

"Pardon me," replied the man in a coat. "I am Evan Yeltsin of the Bureau of Psychological Health, section C, and I'm here to visit this girl. Are you her father?"

"Yes."

The deceitful Evgeni Krasnikov extended his hand and shook the other man's hand with the most wholesome of holds - not to tightly and not too wimpy. This drew confidence in himself out of the other man who now began to feel more at ease in his presence.

Hearing his title and seeing how her husband reacted, the mother warmed up a bit. "Thank you for coming."

"My pleasure," said Evgeni. "I always enjoy peculiar cases. Your daughter is quite exceptional from what I hear at headquarters..."

The parents showed a nervous look for a moment, but Evgeni continued.

"Not in a bad way, of course - just the means by which it happened. And in that regard, I would like to hear her story, ask questions, and offer her some counseling... and for her sake, in private."

"Why in private? Can't we hear about it?" asked the father.

Quoting his script, Evgeni responded, "Due to the nature of psychological cases, there is a possibility that familiar settings and people will more readily insert the victim into the scenario of trauma, and therefore it's best to remove from their presence all reminders of that situation other than the control variables, such as the very carefully formulated questions I have prepared in advance for cases such as hers."

"Ah," such the father, still befuddled but willing to accept the explanation.

The mother was readily complacent, and the doctor wasn't going to argue, so he and the parents left the room.

When the others had departed and closed the door, Evgeni walked moderately slow around the bed to a chair located near the bed head. He carefully sat down so as not to miss his seat while he eyed the patient.

"So," he began, "Anastasia Yashenko, right?"

"Yes sir," said Anastasia.

Evgeni continued, "I heard from the doctor - and correct me if I'm wrong - that you were traumatized on playing a particular game. _The World_ , I believe it's called. Correct?"

"Yes sir."

"Tell me, where did you get this game?"

There was a pause.

"It's a popular game. You can get it online," said the girl. "Why do you want to know?"

"It's important for addressing your trauma. If we know where you get a game from, then we have a starting point for understanding the other psychological factors influencing your playing of the game."

"I understand," said Anastasia.

"Good."

"I got it online, from..." she paused for a moment. It was true that her uncle was going to release it, but it wasn't ready yet. If she told this man, it would be bad publicity. Besides, it's not like it really mattered that it came from a hackers site; it may as well have come from any other game crackers' site. "... some random game crackers website."

"Which one," inquired Evgeni. He could sense he was getting somewhere.

"I don't remember... I..."

"Why not?" he pressed.

"I've looked at dozens of those sites and taken games from all over."

"In that case, would you give me a list?"

"Sure," agreed Anastasia. What choice did she have? The alternative was that, being a doctor, he might have her computer taken away and internet history examined. At least being cooperative might avoid those issues.

"Thank you," replied Evgeni. "I'm sure that once we see those sources, they will be familiar to my colleagues and I, and we'll have a solution preformulated for the trauma you have."

Anastasia wanted to correct his grammar but held her tongue. _How would he respond?_ she thought. It wouldn't have been nice of her, especially considering he was trying to held. Still, she had to say something because she had already twitched her lips and now he was watching.

"Yes?"

The girl spout the first thing she could think of. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Anastasia turned to climb out of bed.

"Wait a moment, young lady," said Evgeni. "We're not quite done yet."

"You have more questions?"

"Absolutely. You didn't think I was going to stop at one did you?"

The girl sighed. "I guess not." She repositioned herself against her pillow.

The secret agent smirked. "Tell me: What was it like to play the game?"

"You can read about it in the game manual," Miss Orderly retorted.

"I know that, but as a doctor, I wanted to get to know it from your eyes... I want to see it from my patient's perspective." Evgeni had messed up, but he thought his fudge job was good enough.

His bizarre sentence struck Anastasia's linguistic nerve. For a moment there, he didn't sound like a doctor. The word wiz's interest was now perked. "What do you mean?" begged Anastasia.

"I mean..." Evgeni cleared his throat, trying to think of something quick in the delay, "that as a patient... it's hard for doctors to see inside your head... We want to get the feel, to sense what you sense."

He was sounding even less like a doctor now. _Why is he using third person?_ Anastasia wondered.

"Ssssooo..." began Anastasia in a curious voice, "You want...?"

Evgeni waited a moment to see if the girl would finish her sentence. She didn't. She played on him. Any good doctor would continue his explanation. Clearly, this guy didn't seem to know what he was talking about, or he was simply new. Moreover, she was now enjoying toying with him. For the end of this conversation, she was now planning a brief, pleasant - at least for her - lecture on speaking like a professional doctor.

After a couple seconds, he finished her sentence. "I simply want to know about your gaming experience. What is it like in The World?"

Anastasia smiled. "It's a fun place."

"Fun? But it can give you trauma," he objected.

"Yes, but that's only because of certain monsters."

"I see. And which monster gave you the trauma this time?"

Anastasia paused and looked off in the distance in wonder. An expression of mystique cloaked her face. How could she explain it? The monster wasn't known to anyone on the Japanese servers, so news of it had never reached the forum as far as she knew. Perhaps the news had reached now, but the game had already been shut down. _That's funny..._ she pondered, _he hasn't said anything about that yet. Wouldn't he be happy the game is no longer online? Why would he be asking about a dead game?_ Then it hit her: _Service for the game has already stopped, so he wants to know why I am still playing!_ He already knew what game she was playing - he said so in the beginning. She bit her lip. _Oops. Have I already let on that there's an alternative server?_

"Um..." she said.

The skinny man tilted his head in innocent expectation.

The nervous hacker looked at the sleuthing spy and said, "It's not really something I can describe."

"What do you mean?"

"Well... I can't speak Japanese, and since everyone talks about the monsters in Japanese on the game forums, I don't know what this one was."

"I see," sighed Evgeni in his deceitful way, attempting to convince his prey the matter was over. He looked out into the room so as to get her eyes to follow his towards the wall and away from him. This would relax her, he thought.

"I am curious, though..." he continued.

Anastasia swallowed her saliva.

"How you're still playing. I mean, that game's service ended just recently, didn't it?"

"It did," she admitted.

"Are you playing it on someone else's servers?"

Anastasia was trapped and she knew it. If she admitted to playing on a random server, he would ask how she found out about it. If she refused, he would take her computer and find out by force, thereby revealing the secret and ruining her uncle's plans for a clean release. _Not yet..._ she thought. _We have to save Mikmik first._ On the other hand, if she denied it, then it wouldn't be long before he had weaseled her back into the same hole and her integrity would be destroyed. Then again, if her integrity was so important, she could start right off that bat with a convincing little lie.

"Yes," she began, "I had found out that someone else had the game up for a short while, but they were going to shut it down permanently this weekend, so I was hoping to get some game time in before that happened."

"Interesting," replied Evgeni. Believing he now had the girl's confidence, he let down his guard a tad. "And who are these people?"

Anastasia raised an eyebrow and eyed the man as if he didn't know the sun rose at dawn. "I don't know!" she said in a cocky tone that matched her facial expression.

The man half-chuckled, "I didn't think so. But if you do know something about how to get in touch with them, please tell me. It's important that I view The World myself so that I can get a better idea of what caused your trauma."

"I wouldn't want my doctor to be traumatized," objected the patient.

"I won't be. I've seen very gruesome, bloody scenes in my line of work," confessed Evgeni in an ironically truthful way.

"It'll be gone by the end of this weekend, so you won't be able to see it anyway. I... don't really have a way to get in touch with them. I just found the game some time ago on some forum - I don't recall which - and kept playing for a while."

"How did you know the game was going to end?" inquired the spy.

"There's an in-game messaging system. Once in awhile, news from the administrators will be passed along to the other players and find its way to me. I don't have any way of sending messages back, though."

"I see," replied Evgeni. "In that case, we'll proceed with other parts of my examination at another time. I'm sure you're hungry now after this long conversation."

"I am," replied Anastasia, just now recognizing thou sound of her own stomach's gurgle.

"Very well," said Evgeni as he stood up. "Until later, you're dismissed."

Anastasia climbed out of bed and joined her parents sitting anxiously in a waiting room at the end of the hall. As they drove home, Anastasia stared out the car window and contemplated the events of the morning. _There's something odd about Evgeni_ , she thought, but she couldn't place it. Maybe he wasn't experienced at talking with patients directly due to being in a research lab for so long, but that wouldn't explain why he was so suave with her parents in the beginning. In any case, she could muse about it later. At the very least, she had kept secrets for her uncle, and he would be pleased. She had kept secret the location of _The World Neuvo_.


	29. 29

## 2018:5:13:20:02 - Internet: Anonymous Hackers Forum, Messaging Room

"I've found a polar bear."

"How's the weather in Sweden?"

"Icy with a pinch of fresh air."

"Ask away!"

"Anyone know of Evan Yeltsin, psychologist?"

"More info?"

"Tall, thin, smooth talker."

"Not helpful."

"Bureau of Psychological Health, Section C?"

...

"No one by that name in their records."

"Not even new?"

"Never. The staff database is public... to us crackers, at least. :)"

"Ok, thanks."

## 2018:05:15:17:01 - Real Life: 23rd Division Headquarters, Moscow, Russia

It was nearing the end of a long day for the average worker, but for Evgeni, the work was just beginning. On the table before him were an unsorted array of papers - printouts, copier paper with scribbled notes, and college-ruled sheets with bulleted lists bearing critical information.

In a mere week, Evgeni had already acquired a handful of informants. At the top of his list of informants was the girl he had met in the hospital, Anastasia Yashenko. She was hiding information still, Evgeni suspected this was because she thought that he - being a doctor - might take away her fun. She could continue to have her fun, he thought, and it would be beneficial for him if she did so. From now on, her network connection would be tapped, and unless she knew of a means of hiding her internet browsing, it wouldn't be long before he had traced her fun little game back to its source... _somewhere in the snow_ , he dreamed.

The next informant was the housemaid of the Yashenko's residence, from whom he learned that Anastasia's uncle Dasomov had called mere minutes before the discovery of Anastasia's trauma. Granted, the phone call was about some competition business, but it was made out to be urgent.

"He could be the culprit," said Evgeni, grinning to himself. His smile faded for a moment when he remembered the nature of the citizens of the country he was in. This was a land of hackers. _Anyone_ could be the culprit. It was possible that the popularity of this game had already spread far and wide before Boris heard wind of it. Still, this Dasomov might provide a clue as to its whereabouts. After all, the dossier on Dasomov showed him to be a security expert, so naturally, he would be good at hiding things. However, no security expert concerned with keeping this source code a secret would be so foolish as to contact another member over the phone. In fact, Dasomov may have given the code to his niece directly. Therefore, Evgeni presumed that if Dasomov did have some knowledge of the code, he might be readily willing to inform anyone interested in playing the game. And if he didn't know, then his answer would be a nonchalant apology. In any case, this Dasomov deserved a visit.

"Casual or secretive?" said Evgeni to himself. Coming as KGB would be too frightening. His identity with Anastasia was already established, so there was no chance he could ask for the game through her unless he altered his persona and pretended to be a mad doctor in love with games. Until he had pinpointed his top suspects, there was no reason to expose his identity so soon, but if he sent someone else to do the job, he wouldn't be able to gauge whether or not he had exposed the fact that the KGB was watching. "Looks like I have no choice," he finally admitted. Tomorrow morning, he would take a train to Saratov.


	30. 30

## 2018:05:16:19:02 - Real Life: Yegor's Residence

"Good evening, everyone," Yegor announced cheerfully under his alias Zontna in chat. "As you know, we've been going over the logging data, and thanks to the helpful guidance of our newest member, Fusota-ri, we were able to fully understand the logging messages and understand the codebase in far greater detail. Furthermore, Kriegbrot has been investigating the German section of code, and he has some fascinating news for us. Take it away, Kriegbrot!"

Kriegbrot: "What?"

Zontna: "I meant give us the news."

Kriegbrot: "Ah, yes. There is news. The Harald Hoerwick code uses special exchange code. It is Russian code. It is protocol PNAK-6731 and PNAK-6734."

Zontna: "X) Anyone know what this means?"

The chat was silent. Yegor was slightly surprised, but then it took him a moment to remember no one else was a data scientist like him. But even Doslad didn't reply, and that was surprising.

Zontna: "Ok, let me inform you. PNAK-6731 and PNAK-6734 are information storage and exchange frameworks. It was a complicated system originally developed for artificial intelligence back during the era of the European Artificial Intelligence Consortium."

q5corbo: "Rings a bell."

Zontna: "It was a short-lived consortium, but all kinds of wonderful technology came out of it before it lost funding."

q5corbo: "Was the code made public, then?"

Zontna: "It was. Since it was developed by many European nations, the code is in various European languages. The PNAK exchange frameworks are in Russian, even though some of the code was probably written by other Europeans."

q5corbo: "Why's that?"

Zontna: "Because a Russian started it, of course! :D"

q5corbo: "Awesome! :D"

Zontna: "This means one of the underlying aspects of the game code has Russian comments!"

q5corbo: "Cool!"

Jyos: "Not to be picky, but given the silence early on in this chat, I don't think many people know about this... PNAK framework. How does it even work?"

Zontna: "Ok, so it's rather complicated, and everyone will need to read the code eventually anyways. But the gist of it is that the framework allows for beautiful interplay between entities in The World. Exchanging information by means of this mechanism is so much more powerful than the sissy game built on top of this system. You can technically make everything its own AI."

q5corbo: "Way cool!"

Zontna: "There are limitations, of course. Knowledge in this world is a special pseudo-knowledge system that makes data transfer fast and easy while relating it back to more complex data that can be used in 'understanding' - in other words, more rigorous calculations and so forth."

Xil-Sta: "Sounds like you're going to have fun with this."

The chat room discussion picked up as various people chimed in with questions. Yegor tried answering some of them, but the more he tried, the more difficult it seemed. He would need to write a book just to explain it.

The truth was, PNAK-6731 and its close relative PNAK-6734 were about the most mysterious data exchanges in the world. The mechanism was pure genius and was composed by dozens of people - data scientists, statisticians, mathematicians, and software architects - from all over Europe. That said, explaining the mechanism seemed easy - just look at the code. _Understanding_ the mechanism could only be done by the most devoted of scientists... with the help of really good books and years of training, especially training by people who actually wrote the code. Yegor happened to meet one of these people through an old professor of his, and their interaction lasted long enough for him to get an idea of what the framework did. It was enough for him to see how beautiful it was, but even for an experienced analyst like himself, it could take years to understand this. Nothing was quite as exciting as discovering this code and getting to toy with it. Then again, there was something else pressing.

Yegor looked over at his phone. Work wasn't quite at a lull, but there had been enough time for him to make a phone call that he kept pushing back until this morning. Of all people, he had called a slick American executive named Anakin Sullivan. To his questionable relief, he had only reached the secretary. She said Mr. Sullivan would return his call in a couple of days if that was ok. Yegor agreed, unable to think of any excuse not to let the man call.

The cords of fate around Yegor's cranial lobes seemed both snipped and yet gripping. When dogs are brought to a kennel and suspect life is on the line, none of them imagine a grown man in their place having a similar gravity in his suspicions. Taking a job overseas would make him a marked man, and yet career advancement dragged him in that direction. Remaining where he was would mean inevitable fate anyways. He was aging - whether he felt it or not - and spending time with the game meant not having the extra hours he might work towards savings for his old age. But what was his life for anyways? This question deserved his utmost attention. He could put it off until later, but he could only put it off for so long.


	31. 31

## 2018:05:17:08:05 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

 _*Knock, knock*_ went the metal bashing ball against its wooden target.

Dasomov checked his tiny peek hole to see who it was. A stranger dressed in black stood shivering outside. He wore a thick coat, and the top of his tie and suit were visible a down to a few inches off the neck. His blond hair wavered in the wind and the cigarette between his lips let off a trail like a ghost made of snowflakes as he looked down the lane left of the door. Nothing about him was recognizable to Dasomov, but he wasn't dressed as a street scum aiming to break in.

Opening the door, Dasomov greeted the stranger with his blunt greeting that always resembled a demand: "Yes?"

The man turned to look at him. "Dasomov, I presume?"

Dasomov gave him a facial expression of obvious confusion and suspicion. "Who are you?"

"Sergei Kalashnikov," said the man. "I spoke with your employer, and he said I'd find you here."

"What's your business?" replied Dasomov, still refusing to acknowledge his identity.

"I work for a security firm in downtown Moscow. We were having a bit of trouble lately and needed someone of your level of expertise to get us out of a jam."

Dasomov still wasn't comfortable. He always made it a habit to refuse any guests except the ones he invited or relatives whom he couldn't refuse. Such a mannerism was part of his highly suspicious nature. It made him excellent in the business of security but was troublesome when he tried to make and keep friends. That was one of the reasons he treasured the relationships he did have.

For this undesired intruder, a simple cop-out might suffice. "Ok. I'll pass the word on for you."

"That's not necessary. You fit his description perfectly. I'm sure he could read your mind by osmosis if it's not the same mind as yours."

"If your so good at solving mysteries," shot Dasomov, "solve your own."

With that, he was about to slam the door in the man's face, but the man held it open and called out with a plea, "Wait, wait! I'm not a computer scientist. I have a computer problem, not a people problem!"

Dasomov reopened the door partially to let himself be humored for a moment.

"Hear me out," said the man. "There are some problems..." he stuttered and then took a half-gasping breath. "I would not have come all the way from headquarters, corporate headquarters, to see some nobody programmer. The fact is, we have a serious problem, and from what we've heard, you're the best guy in the business."

"There are thousands of programmers in Moscow," Dasomov retorted. "It sounds like you didn't search hard enough."

"We did," claimed the man. "But our business connections led us to you."

"Then why didn't you talk to me at work?"

"Your boss said you don't generally go to an office. You're still technically an independent contractor."

He was right on both accounts. The game had been so interesting, that Dasomov had needed to play catch up after fretting over what had happened to his niece. The Mobashem Incident was still unsolved in as much as they were "making progress" according to Zontna. As long as Mikmik remained captured, the problem remained. Dedicating time to solving it wasn't something Dasomov could afford - not and still go to his office, that is.

Irking his lips to one side of his face to form a frown, Dasomov stood silently contemplating while the other man waiting anxiously for a response.

"If you really need work done," began the experienced engineer.

The other man began to smile.

"Leave a note in my office. I'll see it eventually," ended Dasomov.

The smile quickly faded. The mystery man sighed and then leaned in a little closer "Look, I know odd jobs may not be up your alley..."

"They aren't."

"But here's the real story."

Dasomov gave him a look of unimpressed disapproval. Finally, the truth was coming out.

The other man continued, "My boss wants to see my resourcefulness before I move up in the company. I heard you weren't making a killing lately either, but even still, I think you might recognize a big monetary boost for mutual cooperation."

He was hinting at black money, and Dasomov knew it. Admittedly, the man might pay Dasomov out of pocket, but the money might also come from the coffers of the company, making it potential theft. There was no way for Dasomov to verify this wasn't happening, and the only way he could get away with it is if no-one at the business ever saw Dasomov. Things were fine now, and while business may have been slow lately, it wasn't slow enough to merit getting in trouble with the law. Then again, was the price right? Did the handy hacker have a sense of morality or a penniless pocketbook? It wouldn't hurt to ask, though it would build expectations. Might as well keep the fish on the hook until he could learn more about this man, especially if the information might help him later figure out just how he found out about Dasomov.

In reality, Dasomov was a closely guarded secret of the companies he did business with. On the one hand, it showed his value to them and kept away flaky contractors. On the other hand, it started to tighten his business. Normally, Dasomov would spend some time in the evenings advertising on the net, but that time was stolen by the game.

"How much?" inquired Dasomov, knowing he could always laugh at the price and back out without leaving any residual expectations in the other man.

"Fifty percent of my first year salary."

"Fifty percent of nothing," Dasomov remarked, following it with a quick chuckle. Again, he began to close the door, but this time, it shut all the way. With a quick whoosh, he set the lock. _Game over, stranger_ , he thought to himself.


	32. 32

## 2018:05:17:19:39 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

Spring had gradually lightened the steps of its world, and the light of the evening sun could now be seen for a longer period of time into the evening. Its dim orange light played a teasing tap dance on the clouds along the distant horizon.

Ratcheting up a cup of joe to his lips was a weary analyst whose daily workload had just matched that of a beaver in a sudden flood. The joe washed down the half-cup of cocktail from the celebratory bottle that was now positioned as a dog comforting its master and standing guard by his chair. A couple puddles of the drink, enjoying the warmth of thighs they might have fed, evaporated into the impending darkness.

The sun finally fading out, the twinkling of the tips of the river waves ceased. The hues of the sky paid their dues in color until the last of their royal robes morphed from purple to mourning.

A shaky hand wiggled across the expanse of space between man and his light. Trying once, trying twice, trying thrice, the forefinger flipped the switch that made again the visibility of the world.

As the hour progressed, the keeper of the night sky returned to its throne. A weary worker tilted his head back to behold its coming. To his mind came a fragment, first revealed to a fool who had tried to make the impossible and now describing the tale of another's exploits:

 _When one points their finger to the moon,_

 _Oh ye fool,_

 _Shall gaze upon the fingertip._

In moments like these, the clarity of those words cried with vengeance yet remained as ignored as crickets with broken legs.

"Time to go have fun," muttered the passionate programmer.

Inside his castle, his weapon of choice against the wall awaited the gripping of his determined hands.

Not a soldier long away from battle is prepared for the next fight. Standing proved to be a battle in itself, and the struggle left him creeping inch by inch indoors until he could at last close it behind him. Worn out, he retired to the closest comfy chair.

And the beautiful thoughts of tomorrow tempted him enough to make them dreams.

## 2018:05:17:20:18 - Real Life: Evan's Residence

Scrolling through messages in the chat window, Evan quickly brought himself up to speed on the day's activity. Zontna had just logged in. q5corbo had been firing everyone up on the idea that they would soon be able to free Mikmik and perfect the game. There were a number of naysayers as there always had been. This time, however, some of the usual pessimists were taking on a different tone and suggesting pushing forward with the launch-for-play of the new server, alpha ( **α** ).

The **α server** wasn't complete by any means. In fact, the only thing at least eighty percent done was its root town, **α Notre Borealis**. It was a clever name and meant "Our Northern Wind". The ironic part was that this name had been suggested by Mikmik. Opening the server up for gameplay without Mikmik would be selfish, and the thought of his disappearance would then remain forever whenever they played.

On the other hand, members would start to move away from the project if something wasn't done soon. Over a month had passed since the loss of Mikmik, and the focus of progress had turned from building on a fun game to peering into the parts of this mysterious machine. The latter was a task everyone had anticipated would occur gradually. Eventually, the frustration of dealing with the Mobashem issue was going to overpower the excitement of future gameplay.

Something needed to be done. Thus, Evan spoke up.

Jyos: "We could play on the test server for a while. It's always online."

q5corbo: "Great idea, Jyos!"

Xil-Sta: "Many people have noted that it's boring."

Jyos: "Test Phase Bolgograd has tons of stuff in it. There should be plenty to explore and have an adventure in."

Xil-Sta: "You sound like q5corbo."

q5corbo: "Yay! I have a twin!"

Xil-Sta: "Don't get too excited."

Zontna: "That's scary."

Zontna: "Good evening, everyone!"

Xil-Sta: "You're finally here."

Zontna: "Long day."

q5corbo: "Can we play on the test server?"

Zontna: "Sure. Why are you asking?"

There was a buzz of people answering, most of whom registered some sort of complaint about the current state of affairs.

Zontna: "Whoa! Whoa! Hold on everyone! I understand your frustration. Frankly, not to spite anyone, but I've found the whole thing thrilling. That said, I understand you want to play. The test server is always open. I'm sorry it doesn't have much in it. It would be nice if we knew more about how everything worked because at the moment, it's been a real challenge to put in NPCs."

Xil-Sta: "Is it really that complicated?"

Zontna: "I know you haven't worked on the codebase or assets, Xil-Sta, so let me get you up to speed. Actually, let's start with Jyos. Tell us about the assets, Jyos."

Jyos: "The assets were a mess."

Zontna: "You could be more descriptive."

Jyos: "What do you want me to say?"

Zontna: "Describe the layout."

Jyos: "There wasn't much of one. Files were everywhere - here and there, in this folder and that folder."

Zontna: "Stuff meant to be associated with a single player could be found all over the place."

Jyos: "Oh, yeah. There was that."

Zontna: "The source code was very similar. Code ..."

Zontna: "Normally in games, you put all of the associated code together. The Japanese-commented code all seems to be this way unless it wraps the German-commented code. The German code is a mess. I guess Hoerwick, or whoever the real inventor was, was a scatter-brained maniac with no sense of categorization. Either that, or he was a genius who recognized the relationships between things beyond my understanding."

Xil-Sta: "So we're never going to get to play? Greaaaaat..."

Murmuring seeped into the chatroom in the form of disguised complaints, hints at regrets of ever having joined, and musings about ideas that would have been in place had things been as they had hoped.

Zontna: "Hang with us, everyone."

Brofin: "Your wish is my command."

Xil-Sta: "*sigh* Just as I was starting to write a good story, everyone wants to jump ship. Maybe I shouldn't have written about the end of The World."

Jyos: "Reminds me. Hey Xil-Sta, I'd like to talk to you about your story."

q5corbo: "This world is not ending!"

Xil-Sta: "Anytime. Tonight, maybe?"

q5corbo: "We can do it, everyone!"

Zontna: "All good things to those who wait patiently. Once we understand The World, we'll be able to hack it to our liking."

Jyos: "Maybe tomorrow. It'd be nice to play a little bit in the game."

Xil-Sta: "Definitely. Even if it is on the test server."

Evan closed the chat window. The sickness was contagious, and even Evan felt a tinge of the disease creeping into his mind. He too was getting sick of waiting. Obviously, the creator of the code was a crazy computer maniac who had no sense of fun. Why couldn't the game be normal? Why did it need to be so complicated? It wasn't like there was anything special, was there?

As he pondered on this thought, a handful of things came to Evan's mind. First and foremost was the whole problem of trapping a conscious mind within the world. Maybe a psychopath would consider that a fun idea, but this game feature alone was a red flag. If trapping people in a digital world was considered fun by the creator, then what other nasty traps were waiting? Or perhaps the trap itself was a later addition by someone else. It didn't matter. Maybe Doslad would know.

It was odd that Doslad wasn't online this evening. He always showed up. His presence was almost a necessity. No, it _was_ a necessity. Every evening, the pessimists would start rambling, and then Doslad would have to yell at everyone to keep them in line. Leadership like his wasn't replaceable. Without him, the project could have very easily fallen apart in a matter of weeks, but here they were on month three or four, was it? Evan couldn't quite remember. He was beginning to see the importance of Doslad being around.

 _I wonder what he's really like in person?_ thought Evan. Despite the time they had worked together, Evan only knew of Doslad as the strict, goal-oriented project leader. He could be an empathetic leader when the need called for it, but he never backed down from the goal, and he always quieted the naysayers with his authority and confidence. _Maybe we should have a quiet chat._ thought Evan. _I'll need to be on his good side anyways if I want the duty as story writer._

Prematurely ending that thought by impatience, Evan loaded up the application that would be his favorite past-time: the game _The World: Neuvo_.


	33. 33

## 2018:05:17:20:51 - The World Neuvo: μ Test Phase Bolgograd

Blue rings arose and faded as Jyos logged into The World near the Chaos Gate. Looking around, he took note of the changes in scenery since the last time he had been here.

The field was a flat plane covered with patches of various textures the hackers had been testing. In some areas, there was dirt and grass, in others, fabrics or tiles. There was neither a single cliff nor mountain, but a complete vision of the endless landscape was impeded by the numerous structures stacked around.

Each of the structures contained some element of fantasy, be it ancient or modern, and carried with it the unique imprint of its creator.

Jyos wandered towards a large structure an arrow shot away. It had high walls slanted inward, topped with a small square building like a ziggarat. Around its base were recesses containing reliefs depicting indescribable animals. At the front was a single corridor leading up to a wooden door framed with decorative tan paneling painted with swirls and squares and letters of a mystical language.

The design was quite charming to Jyos, and though none of the building was active as of yet, Jyos dearly wanted to go inside.

"What do you think?" said a voice.

Jyos turned around and found Kellei standing behind him.

"Did you make this?" asked Jyos.

Kellei shook his head with a smile. "No, but I'd be quite proud if I had. It's a real masterpiece."

"I'll say!" agreed Jyos. "Do you know who did it?"

Kellei chuckled. "I should be asking you. After all, you did all of the assets."

Jyos bobbed his head in agreement. "True, but I did give a number of people leeway."

"Risky isn't that?"

"I guess." Jyos sighed. "After going over the original assets for weeks, I was sick of looking at models. There was always more and more to do. Just when I thought I was finished, assets would turn up again in some crazy place. None of it made sense."

"No pattern?"

"None."

"Surely there must be some kind of pattern," Kellei contested.

"If there is one, I can't figure it out. My only guess is that it has something to do with how things work on the inside... inside of this game."

Kellei shrugged. "I'm no good at solving mysteries otherwise I would offer more help."

"It's fine." Jyos turned away and began examining the structure again. "Maybe we'll stumble on the key to it all at some point."

"Hm... well, we're not going to stumble on the answer here. I know that."

"What do you mean?"

"Here, in our own little world. On the test server."

"Oh! Yeah, sure," Jyos agreed. "I know that. I just don't feel like working on the problem right now."

"I understand."

For a time, Jyos and Kellei became lost in thought, examining the world around them. They continued to admire the oddly designed mesh before their eyes, carefully marching their eyes through the grooves in its reliefs, until Kellei had grown bored.

"I'll see ya," he said as he turned and walked away.

Jyos was caught off guard. "Uh... ok."

Realizing he had remained in one spot for several long minutes, Jyos exited the corridor and made his way around the rest of the game field.

His next stop was an old-fashioned diner, complete with a bar, tables, and chairs. Nothing about it belonged in the setting of the original backstory of The World, but it made for a nice model.

Following that, he went to see a model of a haunted house. It too looked odd in The World. Upon entering, Jyos found himself surrounded by black walls will all sorts of curls and spikes pointing out of broken stairways and baroque style furniture. In the center of a rotund tile-floored room was a statue of an ancient god. It stood out from its surroundings in an unusual way. The eyes on its face numbered three and were colored in a deep marble blue meant to make them shine. Because the hackers had not yet figured out materials completely, the eyes did not glow, which made evident how unrefined the rest of model was. Jyos shook his head. Of all the things in this creepy castle, here was something that actually fit the setting of the world and remained incomplete.

 _Perhaps that's the case with this entire game!_ Evan thought. How depressing. What could be worse that spending countless hours fixing a horde of problems left behind by someone who had realized the futility of repairs and abandoned the endeavor? But he was Russian. Surely he and his fellow hackers could patch together such an awesome game. _Patching games is more of an American thing_ , he privately joked. Smiling, he departed from the building.

His final stop was a waterfall structure that wasn't yet working. It was shaped in four tiers, each tier hovering above another except for the bottom tier. And each tier was round and larger than the one below it except for the top tier. The middle tiers had holes in them, and the water was supposed to flow from a spawning point in the top tier and flow through the holes in the next two tiers until reaching the bottom where it would disappear. _Clever contraption_ , Evan thought. Gazing at it for some time, Evan couldn't decide if it belonged in The World more than anything else he had seen or if it was so radical in its design that anything related should be forbidden. As an aesthetic person, he could hem and haw over it all evening, but as the asset manager of a game mod created by volunteers, he would have to take whatever was contributed. He started to groan. _Real game developers get the benefit of professionally made assets. And they can space out the addition of cool features between versions._

Then a funny question hit him. _What version of the game is this?_

Jyos logged off.

## 2018:05:17:22:10 - Real Life: Evan's Residence

Evan checked the main game screen. Version 3.95. _Looks odd,_ he thought. It would not be hard to double check, so he got out of his comfy chair to go to his closet.

Inside the closet was stack of boxes, the bottom being the one of most interest as was always the case with Murphy's Law. After pulling it out, he set it down in front of him and opened up a world of memories.

The box contained dozens of old CDs, including music, video games, and data records. In sum total, the contents of the box would have sold for maybe 10 ruples at a garage sale, but to Evan, these were collectors items. As he pulled them out and before setting them aside, he gazed at their covers and smiled. Behind his pupils, hundreds of fun memories returned. And with each one, a hint of more discontent in The World crept in. "Why do I waste my time with that game?" he mused. "I should try one of these other games again. At least I'll know it's a finished game."

For a moment, he paused, unsure if he should bother continuing to check. Curiosity got the best of him, and there was no sense in leaving an easy question unanswered. Thus, his objective finally reached his hands: a game box containing a CD for the original game of The World. Turning it around, his eyes filled with wonder at the label he read:

"Version 3.02."

"Doslad," Evan uttered in a soft, suspicious voice. "Where did you get our game?"


	34. 34

## 2018:05:17:21:05 - The World Neuvo: μ Test Phase Bolgograd

Roaming the plains with his characteristic hop and skip was q5corbo, The Optimist. _Perhaps my name will become legendary_ , he thought. Nothing could spoil his outlook. Somehow, his gang would overcome their difficulties, Mikmik would return, and all of them would take part in an adventure of a lifetime, exploring the world they had struggled so hard to build. Even now, they were enjoying a taste of the fruit of their labors.

Sadly, Doslad had forbidden everyone from using a headset until the game was fixed and the Mikmik issue was resolved. Otherwise, the user behind q5corbo would have his eyes closed, enjoying the fake, simulated wind blowing through his character's hair. His eyes were wide open to enjoy the scenery, but he still nearly missed a hand waving at him from behind the mesh of a boulder.

Suddenly curious, he skipped over to it to investigate. A hand reached out and yanked his avatar behind the rock.

There before him stood a strange new avatar bearing the username "Taha".

"It's me, Tovia," said Taha.

"Ah, but you look like a Taha to me," responded q5corbo in a joking manner.

Taha frowned. "I know. I can't use my old avatar obviously. It's taken."

"Indeed. But why are you hiding? Afraid people will laugh at that funny looking avatar you've chosen. It's not like it's that ugly..."

"Shush. I'm hiding because there may be someone infiltrating The World Neuvo and they might recognize my old avatar."

"Ooo, how frightening," q5corbo said in a pleasant sarcastic way. "Old friend?"

"No, but I wish you would take me more seriously."

"I'm not sure what there is to take serious."

"This person... I've never told anyone I play this game, but this person found out about it after I had my traumatic experience. Or maybe they knew before..." Taha looked away, contemplating to herself.

"Old friend then?"

"No, I've never met them."

"I'm glad you've at least passed your trauma."

"Thanks, but that's not the issue," Taha objected. "Please listen."

"I'm all ears." q5corbo smiled big.

"This person prevented the doctor from letting me out of the hospital. They came and talked to me about this game, asking where I got it from and what was in it."

"So they're basically clueless. That's good!"

Taha shook her head. "Where's Daso... I mean Doslad."

"Dasowho?"

"Find me Doslad. Where is he?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows. He didn't show up for the meeting this evening. Did you not come into chat."

"I can't," Taha objected. "The person watching me might find out."

q5corbo scoffed in laughter. "Ha! Ha! Who do you think this is? A Russian? It's not like it's the KGB."

"I asked on the forums about this guy, and the place he works has no record of him ever being there in recent history."

"Well, maybe he's new."

"He's not new. He's pretty slick when it comes to dealing with people. He scares me. I don't know who it is. You have to tell Das... Doslad."

"Who is this Das you keep talking about?"

"His nickname."

"I see. So you actually have a nickname for the infamous Doslad? That makes you a first."

Taha said nothing for a moment. She seemed to be acting sheepish. At this, q5corbo had all sorts of wonderful thoughts come to mind. _Do they know each other intimately? Are they dating perhaps?_ q5corbo smirked.

"What are you smiling about?" demanded Taha.

"Oh, nothing. But I am curious about your relationship with Dasy boy."

"With who?"

"Doslad!"

"Ugh! You're hopeless," shot Taha. "Just get Doslad here as soon as you can, ok?"

"As you wish."

With that, q5corbo pranced off to continue exploring. He singled out a number of cheerful looking items lying around that he would like to have in his own personal space once the game supported such rooms. Personal space was a planned feature even if a bit ironic considering that the game was designed for community. Nevertheless, it was one of those things to look forward to. It made the game more welcoming, and that was something q5corbo definitely wanted. If there was in fact a stalker following Tovia - or Taha now - he would be welcome too. The game had plenty of room and plenty of places where people could go to escape. It was the real world where there was no escape.


	35. 35

## 2018:05:18:06:12 - Real Life: 23rd Division Headquarters, Moscow, Russia

"He didn't bite," said a man in a long dark suit, standing in the doorway of a private office.

"That's what I expected," said Evgeni leaning against the naked wall.

In the center of the room a desk covered in papers resting behind a plaque bearing the name "Molotov." On the top of the stack was the dossier of Yashenko, sitting open. Evgeni closed it when he noticed the eyes of the other man gradually sinking towards it.

"Oh?" said the other man. "I was a guinea pig? I didn't know you rated me so low."

"Nonsense, you're an excellent agent."

"Then why try me on an expected failure?"

"My apologies," replied Evgeni. "No one else was available, so I had to grab you on short notice."

"That's not what I was asking."

Evgeni looked down, knowing he couldn't beat around the bush with his fellow agent. Besides, it wouldn't hurt to toss a bone to the dog. "You were used because it was essential that I know for certain he has integrity, and I needed to know his reception. You said he refused."

"Just slammed the door in my face... twice!"

"Ah, that bad, eh?" Evgeni started to chuckle. "I guess some people don't thaw with spring."

"Very funny," shot back the other man, insulted.

"Yes indeed. Better you than me."

The other man largely frowned for a minute. "I suppose you want me to go back there."

"Not at all. Your work is done."

"Why couldn't you do it yourself?"

"For the very reason that I very well might. I needed to know his reception of a stranger hinting at the dark market."

At that moment, Molotov walked up behind the man in the suit.

"Doorways are for walking through," announced Boris Molotov.

"Begging your pardon, sir."

"You're dismissed."

At that, the man in the dark suit walked out, allowing Boris to walk in.

"What did you find?" asked Molotov in his usual demanding way. Everyone not above Boris was below him, and any cocktails he shared were rewards, not toasts of friendship. Boris moved around the desk and passed in front of Evgeni as he went to sit in his hideously ugly desk chair with fabric of the same color brown as hay in cow dung.

"You really need to ditch that chair," commented Evgeni.

"It feels fine."

"You always complain about it."

"It's cheap, and we're not buying another one," said Boris, his voice now raising with increasing aggravation. "I didn't come in here to talk about the chair. I want to know what you've found out."

"My first contact was a girl."

"So you said."

"My second was her uncle, but he's a tough nut to approach."

Boris fiddled with the papers on his desk and opened up the top folder. "Is he this Yashenko sitting here?"

"No, that's the girl," said Evgeni as he walked around to the front of the desk, trying not to face Boris.

Boris eyed the papers for a moment, looking for something of interest. "Did you find out anything more about her connection with the game?"

"I've been monitoring her internet this past week, but either she has quit using it or she's been using hidden networks. I suspect the latter, but I'm still not certain of how much to give her credit for."

"You have her whole dossier in front of you, and you can't figure her out?!"

Boris looked up at Evgeni, and the latter turned around to acknowledge him. Evgeni knew what was coming, and after a couple minutes of harsh words, Boris was back to being a professional. By this time, the two of them were hovering over the dossiers in search of something interesting.

"Does the maid have even the slightest possibility of involvement?" asked Boris.

"None."

"Anyone?"

"Dasomov seemed like the only lead, so..."

"So?"

"I will keep an eye on him. He is not often at work because he works alone, which makes it a great cover up."

"It does."

"But one thing that makes this difficult is that none of these people have a reason for keeping the game a secret."

Boris looked at Evgeni with a half frown of anger, as if someone had poured coffee on the seat of his car - no damage, but definitely requiring time to wait for it to dry. "We... As if..." he struggled to spit out the right words. "People everywhere have a reason for this game. It's the greatest source of artificial intelligence anywhere on the planet."

"But it's a game, and that's how people are likely to see it."

"Then it should be easy to take it from them."

"If I can find the correct person to ask, it will be."

"Then find them."

"I will," replied Evgeni quickly. Slower, he reiterated. "I will."


	36. 36

## 2018:05:18:08:12 - Real Life: Yegor's Residence

The chirping of the tiny morning birds composed a pleasant chorus as they sang of freedom and love. Beyond the bars of society, they could roam the face of the earth in search of their dreams, however shallow they might seem to complex creatures.

As a man of complexity, Yegor nevertheless found endless occasions to envy the simple fowl. The particulars of human life weaved nets of rules and obligations stickier than the thickest of spider webs. Of all their chords, the stickiest Yegor imagined was only one: fate. Could it change?

He picked up the phone. _What time is it on the west coast of the United States?_ he wondered. The phone rang, and with each ring his hope faded a tad bit. _Bad timing, I guess,_ he thought. But before he hung up, there was a clicking sound. _Someone pick up?_

"Hello?" crackled a voice.

"Hello, this is..." he stuttered. Maybe he shouldn't give out his full name yet until he knows this guy better. "Yegor, the data scientist."

"Yegor Konstantinov?"

Guess it didn't matter.

"Yes."

"Awesome!" yelled back the voice. "Anakin Sullivan. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Pardon my suave Russian. I guess my deals better make eggs, right?"

His what make what? Yegor couldn't figure out what he was trying to say. Maybe it was an American joke. Or maybe he butchered something.

"I didn't quite catch that," Yegor hinted. The hint was ignored.

"I could use someone batting four-hundred, and I hear you're a real slugger when it comes to sifting C-P-U juices, if you don't mind me saying. I've got some great stuff all lined up for you, and all I need from you is a 'Let's do this, Anakin, Get me started'."

That was more than a simple, "Yes", Yegor noted. _This is going to be fun_ , Yegor thought sarcastically as he rolled his eyes. Yegor was thankful it wasn't an video chat. _Oh well_ , he thought. _Who else have I got to work with?_

"I'm in," said Yegor. He knew he could still back out later if the deals weren't to his liking.

"Awesome!" said Anakin in his corporate salesman way as if he were pleased he just talked a skeptical customer into buying life insurance and wanted the customer to continue following along.

For the next hour, Anakin Sullivan drilled Yegor Konstantinov on what it meant to deal with American business men in California. Everything sounded so bright and sunny, and every deal sounded as sweet and simple as a bowl of Jelly Beans. Yegor kept getting a sinking feeling there was some catch that he just wasn't picking up on. He eventually demanded a retirement from the conversation so he could head to his current job, which Anakin respected.

After hanging up the phone, Yegor breathed a sigh. "Wow," he said aloud. "He's some kind of guy."

There was certainly a catch to those deals, Yegor thought. He couldn't put his finger on it. More research on California would help. He turned and looked at his computer. Perhaps, as he knew all too well, there was another reason for his gut feeling of attachment.

## 2018:05:18:20:12 - Evan's Residence

Evan punched at his keyboard. "Anyone seen Doslad lately?"

q5corbo responded first. "No, but a certain 'Taha' with trauma is looking for Doslad too."

Jyos: "Who? What?"

q5corbo: "Someone infiltrated the game yesterday and played as user 'Taha', claiming to be Tovia."

Jyos: "Well if it is Tovia, that's good news. It means they're not trapped in the game like Mikmik. But what's with the trauma thing?"

q5corbo: "I don't know. Taha just started rambling about trauma and a doctor visit and someone following her."

Kellei chimed in: "Maybe it's someone else pretending to have trauma and playing a practical joke."

Jyos: "Nobody's going to play a practical joke pretending to have trauma."

The chat chatter picked up with a number of other people pitching in, but Evan began reflecting on the details. The past events had a murky suspicious look. Doslad had sounded concerned about the loss of Mikmik, but they freaked out with the loss of Tovia. Taha was who? No one else but the hackers on the forum knew about this game so far as they could tell. Hence, no one should know how to log into the game except people in the loop. Hence, the idea of Taha being Tovia would be a reasonable claim. But that presented a few problems. Who was this alleged follower of Taha? Couldn't Taha be the intruder and trying to draw away suspicion? That wouldn't make sense: Why draw any attention to even the possibility of an intruder? They obviously had to know of the Tovia problem. What was this about a head problem and a doctor visit?

Jyos: "q5corbo, what was that you said about the doctor visit?"

Brofin: "Tovia turned grey and was sucked away with the monster Mobashem."

q5corbo: "There weren't many details. She just asked for Doslad to meet them."

Jyos: "Brofin, if the person behind Tovia survived, then they may be Taha."

q5corbo: "Oh yeah, they did say the person following them might recognize their old avatar, so they're hiding."

Xil-Sta: "Wouldn't blabbering away about them on chat reveal they are hiding?"

q5corbo: "Sure, but they told me to get Doslad."

Zontna: "What's going on?"

Evan sat back and let the conversation ramble on while he contemplated the details. How could someone following Tovia recognize her avatar? Could the person following Tovia already be a member, hence the need to hide herself? But wouldn't she have given away that she's in hiding by having q5corbo tell everyone about her hiding over chat? Maybe q5corbo was only supposed to tell Doslad, maybe not. But if Taha was trying to be sneaky, they'd have failed twice. For security's sake, it was best if everyone knew anything suspicious about the game or related events so that they could all jump ship if necessary. Hence, q5corbo did the right thing in reporting. Maybe the intruder had access to the game but not the group chat. Then again, why would Taha not make the request in group chat themself? Maybe they were the intruder and consequently didn't have access to chat. But then again, they would need to know about Doslad in the first place, and he'd be playing as Gemphl. Nothing seemed to make sense. Evan needed to know more.

Jyos: "Is the server still up?"

Zontna: "It is."

Jyos: "I'm going to have a peak inside."

Zontna: "Ok?"

Jyos: "I want to meet with this 'Taha'."


	37. 37

## 2018:05:18:20:36 - The World Neuvo: μ Test Phase Bolgograd

Step by attentive step, Jyos roamed the mess of meshes that filled the zone in search of the mysterious Taha. _If Taha is Tovia, they'll surely recognize me,_ he thought. At the same time, there danced in his mind the fancy of finding them first. There was something more comforting in that idea, perhaps the possibility of catching them in the act of spying on other gamers.

"Psst! Jyos!"

Alas, no such luck. At least they recognized him.

Jyos turned to see a strange new character hiding behind a rock. They glanced both ways and then motioned him closer.

"Is Gemphl watching?" said Taha.

"No. He's..." Jyos paused. Should he inform them Doslad hadn't been on chat recently? Why were they asking for Doslad specifically? Did they know Gemphl was Doslad?

"I'm afraid of logging into chat. I might expose our chat system server," said Taha.

"Why?"

"I'm being followed."

"By whom?" _How fun, a mystery... or a lie,_ thought Evan. Was Taha hoping to deceive anyone? Why? What would they gain in doing so?

"I can't explain the details very well, but I just know."

If they were trying to fool anyone, they were doing a pitiful job at it.

"You spilled some of them already," Jyos pointed out.

"I did. I probably said too much then."

"Don't you trust us?" asked Jyos pointedly.

There was a silence. Taha looked down in regret. Evan could tell they were pondering their answer. Evan found himself starting to relax alittle. Perhaps it was because of their canned answers carrying into nothing, Evan felt they were either an amateur failing miserably at tricking him... or it really was Tovia.

The silence carried on for a full minute. Finally, Taha broke the silence.

"I guess trust has always been an issue in this group. We're all so secretive no one wants to share anything with each other..." Taha paused again.

Jyos just stared, unphased.

After a few relaxed breaths, Taha straighted up and eyed Jyos with a serious look, "There's someone - an outsider - who knows about this game. I don't know if they've managed to infiltrate it yet, but they were really curious because they came to me in person and asked about it."

"Really?" said Jyos in modest yet perked curiosity. "What kind of person?"

"I couldn't find out anything about them other than that they weren't who they said they were according to some hackers who have access to the information."

"Who did they say they were?"

"Evan Yeltsin of the Bureau of Psychological Health, section C."

Evan chewed on this tidbit of information for a minute. _This is random. Why would she name someone so random?_ This story wasn't making any sense. What else could he ask but the most logical question:

"Why do you think he was following you?"

"I don't know."

That wasn't helpful. On the one hand, Taha was sounding believable. On the other hand, their story still sounded very contrived and poorly executed. It was time to cut to the chase: perhaps she'd remember more if he asked something he knew about her.

But before he could utter another word, Taha added, "He showed up after..." Taha hesitated. "I need to trust you. Yeltsin showed up when I went to the hospital for trauma. The truth is... I was wearing a headset that day when we were trying to examine... lure and examine Mobashem."

This was Tovia. Now the pieces were fitting into place. But who was Yeltsin? Obviously, he wasn't "who he said he was", but did that mean...

"I see. So this Yeltsin showed up to see you. Was he not of the Bureau of Psychological Health then?"

"Exactly!" Taha said emphatically. "I don't know where he was from. He asked some very piercing questions. He was trying to log in or something. What I don't understand is how he found out and why he's so interested."

"And this makes you nervous?" Jyos said unimpressed.

To Evan, the game was a game. Perhaps the guy was a game fanatic. That wouldn't explain why he suddenly showed up at a hospital, and come to think of it, it was rather creepy that he'd be spying on a gamer so closely that he'd visit her at the hospital. What kind of creep would do that? _Maybe the KGB?_ Evan thought jokingly. Then again, it's not like anyone else would do that. Needless to say, the story was still very confusing. Thankfully, he had at least confirmed this was Tovia.

"Why would someone visit me at a hospital for a game?!" said Taha, expressing aloud Evan's thoughts.

"What all did he ask about?"

"He was..." Taha looked like they were trying to remember. "He asked about my traumatic experience."

"Naturally part of the Psychological Health ploy."

"But he wanted to see it through the eyes of a gamer. He asked about the people running the game, if I knew them, and if the game was still active and how I knew about it."

"Sounds like a rabid gamer who went to an awful lot of trouble just to play an obscure game." _I guess that's not totally unusual for gamers,_ Evan thought.

"Here's the thing though, while I was talking with him, I realized that he knew that I was playing a game whose service had ended. Think about it. He wants to know why we are playing this game after its service has ended."

"Interesting."

"I thought about these things over the week, and it's making me nervous. I think he wants to learn how to put people into comas!"

 _Comatose._ The word resonated in Evan's mind over and over. How could such a thought have eluded him? First of all, he hadn't thought about it in awhile. Mikmik was in a coma perhaps, if not already dead. A sinking feeling ran through Evan's mind. _Mikmik may be dead._ How long had it been since they lost him? At least a month? Maybe longer? Here he had been fascinated by playing a custom copy of the World R:1 and suddenly everything about this setup was rearing its ugly head: a comatose victim, a spy perhaps trying to put people into comas, and a squad of selfish hackers mindlessly bringing about their own capture. Even if they weren't put into literal comas, they would all soon be addicted to playing the game and lose the rest of their lives sitting behind a computer screen. Poor Mikmik had been the first, and he didn't have a choice to escape now. Something had to be done. They had to find Mikmik. In doing so, they may find themselves and realize their madness.

"Can you tell this to Doslad for me?" Taha inquired.

"I can," said Jyos. "There's something else though."

"Yes?"

"You were saying something about the trust in the group earlier. I wanted to hear more about your opinion."

Taha looked down for a moment and sighed. "We don't trust each other enough. We aren't making friends. We've been at this for over a month, and yet, I feel like I hardly know anyone. Now that we have someone trying to infiltrate the game, it'll be important for us to be able to distinguish us from him."

"I see what you mean," began Jyos. "I happen to have made friends with some of the other guys now. I guess... friendship is really just a matter of stepping out yourself. If you're too secretive, you're not going to make any friends. Friendships are about trust."

"Anastasia."

"I beg your pardon?"

"My real name is Anastasia."

It took a second for Evan to catch his bearings. Her introduction seemed out of the blue for a moment but on second thought should not have been unexpected.

"Nice to meet you, Anastasia. I'm Evan... a real Evan, not some phony doctor."

Taha looked nervous.

Jyos sighed, "I'm not Yeltsin. I didn't visit you at the hospital. I don't even know where you live, and frankly, I don't care. What I do care about is that you like playing video games because that's what we're doing all this for."

Taha smiled. "Thanks."

"For... for what?"

"Giving me peace of mind. You will tell Doslad won't you?"

"I will. Incidentally, though, why do you want to talk to him so badly?"

"He _is_ the project leader."

"True. But word gets around..."

"And I didn't want the spy to find out. I figured the game might be more private because there's so much space, whereas the chat room might be hacked. We use a cheap chat system even if our networks are secure."

 _Wow. She's a really clever girl._ Evan began toying with a certain off-topic idea in his mind. _Wonder what it'd be like to date her?_

"Good answer," was all Jyos could respond to that. "I'm off to find Doslad."

With that, Evan logged out. First mystery solved. The next was yet to come.


	38. 38

## 2018:05:19:08:20 - Real Life: Coffee Shop, Saratov, Russia

"The report you requested." Dasomov handed over a slick folder to a young executive.

"I knew I could rely on you. The steadiest man in the business," said the executive with a smile. "Though it looks like today you have some dark rings under your eyes. I'm sure our clients would like to hear you're working night and day on their stuff, but don't stress yourself too much."

Dasomov squinted, put his hands up to his face, and rubbed his eye lids with his finger tips. "Anything to get the job done, right."

"Excellent. Well if it's too much trouble, I'll hold off on putting the next job in front of you until tomorrow after you've gotten some shut eye."

"Thanks."

The executive got up to leave.

"Hang on a second," Dasomov called out.

"Yeah?"

"Have a seat for a quick sec. I had a question for you."

The executive sat down with a slightly puzzled but cheery look on his face. Something good perhaps? Or a salary raise request? He would be delighted to approve of one. Dasomov wasn't someone he ever wanted to lose.

"You wouldn't have happened to have shared my name with anyone... recently?"

The executive's smile turned into befuddlement and back to a smile. "Recently? How recent are we talking? We usually don't advertise for you, no offense."

"Within the past two weeks."

"Definitely not. You want me to drop your name to someone? Not that - pardon my selfishness - I'd ever want someone to steal you."

"Yeah, that's what I figured. Just that, recently I had an unusual visitor asking for a special job," said Dasomov, emphasizing the word "special".

The executive shook as head softly, indicating he didn't understand and was waiting for more info. "Special? Like, in what way?"

Dasomov rolled his eyes halfway. Surely this executive could not have been in the business for a year and _not_ seen black money. Or maybe he just wasn't catching the very subtle euphemism.

"The kind of job that would get certain people into serious trouble in their life and career."

The executive nodded. "Ah," he said in recognition. "No, we're not interested in losing you. I'd happily toss those _side_ jobs to people looking for them. There's plenty of legitimate business these days for us not to concern ourselves with stuff for bottom feeders."

"Thanks. My thoughts exactly."

"But in regards to this individual..." began the executive. "We'll perhaps I shouldn't ask." The executive got up to leave. "Have a good rest of your day." He pointed at Dasomov, "And get some sleep. Bright and early tomorrow, this city will be rocking, and there will be plenty to do."

Dasomov nodded, and the executive walked away.

## 2018:05:19:19:13 - Real Life: Pavel's Room

Boogieing to something off the KAGE - Pavel and his roomie's favorite illegal internet radio channel - Pavel punched away at his keyboard hoping inspiration would flow from his fingertips automagically. Suitable music always put Pavel in a creative mood, conjuring up in his mind visions of grand mythical beasts with sharp edged blood red scales and husky axemen wearing glimmering breastplates with ancient runes engraved on their rims proclaiming spells of protection. From the beams of light gracefully flowing through treetops there would come fairies of various shapes and sizes, clothed in heavenly or elven garb decorated with golden spirals, wool scarves, and snake skin tassels.

Alas, nothing he envisioned quite aligned itself with the theme and components of The World, and consequently, he often resorted to random imagery yanked from the recesses of his mind or meaningless queries to his most utilized internet search engine. The results were a disgusting hodge-podge that the other members had always found detestable, but Pavel believed their complaints were only due to the originality of his ideas. Gamers never seemed to like anything that differed even slightly from the "official version", and they would raise a ruckus at anything that hinted at deviation.

The stage was set for conflict. Pavel's tongue protruded out of the left side of his mouth as he concentrated on his action scene worthy of anathema.

"Perfect!" he grinned. "Now to share it and receive my due praise."

He loaded up the chat window. The chat room was relatively calm this evening with the exception of a few komrads discussing trivial interests unrelated to the game.

Xil-Sta: "What's up everybody! I just wrote awesomeness!"

Kellei: "I'd hardly call a greeting awesomeness, unless, perhaps, it were awesome."

Brofin: "Any good greeting could be considered awesome."

Xil-Sta: "I'm not talking about the greeting, but yes, my greetings are awesome."

Kellei: "My greetings are awesome too. WHAZZUPGANG?! Hoozahunkabro!"

Brofin: "Hehe, agreed. I liked the one you gave me the day before yesterday."

Kellei: "The one: Me lads of yonder seas, harr be sailin'."

Jyos: "You've become quite a character, Kellei."

Kellei: "Thanks!"

Xil-Sta: "Jyos, you're on! Good. I have stuff to talk to you about."

Brofin: "Agreed."

Jyos: "What on?"

Kellei: "Whatcha been up to Xil-Sta?"

Brofin: "With Jyos, I mean."

Xil-Sta: "I haven't been working with Jyos."

Kellei: "Duh."

Jyos: "?"

Brofin: "See above."

Xil-Sta: "Oops. Wrong poster."

Jyos: "What do you want to chat about?"

Kellei: "My question first."

Brofin: "Both."

Xil-Sta: "Both."

Xil-Sta: "I said it first. *sigh* Lag."

Kellei: "Is this important?"

Xil-Sta: "Anyways. I have some awesomeness for everyone."

Kellei: "Woohoo!"

There was a pause.

Xil-Sta: "I've written a new part of the story!"

Jyos: "I figured."

Xil-Sta: "Jyos, I'd like you to read it."

Kellei: "No more figure skaters."

Jyos: "K."

Xil-Sta: "Zontna has to have someone!"

Brofin: "Are you still doing that? Honestly!"

Jyos: "Can it."

Xil-Sta: "It's gone already, geez."

Xil-Sta: "Deleted it a long time ago."

Kellei: "Behold, the final phase of the cursed wave: Russian figure skaters!"

Brofin: "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

Jyos: "LOLOLOLO XD"

A resounding silent laughter made its way across Pavel's computer screen. Who could resist smiling at such a clever joke? After having a good chuckle aloud - and explaining to his roommate the cause of his suddenly jovial attitude - Pavel paused for a moment and reflected on the significance of the statement. It was the first truly inside joke told among the hackers. There had been funny lines before but nothing so uncommon that ordinary Russians wouldn't understand. Here was a truly unique joke that only these hackers would understand. In a way, it symbolized a stage in the unifying of the ragtag coalition.

Just then, the party was broken up by the bosses of the repository who hadn't checked in on time to witness the fun.

Fusota-ri: "Hello, everyone! Attention!"

Kellei: "Hey!"

Xil-Sta: "Yo!"

Brofin: "Listening."

Fusota-ri: "I have been doing some serious code digging and made some interesting discoveries which you all should know about."

Jyos: "Lay it on us."

Fusota-ri: "But first, Kreigbrot has something to tell us."

Kreigbrot: "Thank you."

Kellei: "You're... welcome?"

Kreigbrot: "Fusota-ri. You had correct my username."

Fusota-ri: "Ah, good. I practiced spelling it, so..."

Kreigbrot: "Ok, so... the Harold Hoerwick code was complex but it was many wrappers. Mostly not code his own. Except some places."

A wrapper was code that merely acted as a front end for other code to make it compatible with code of different interfaces. In essence, what Kreigbrot's statement suggested was that the code for The World was built on top of many other software projects, projects that may - the hackers hoped - be documented somewhere.

Kellei: "If it's not original code, then maybe there's documentation, I wonder?"

Fusota-ri: "Could be. I don't know."

Jyos: "Zontna already told us about Russian code in the core files."

Fusota-ri: "He did. But we didn't realize the breadth of usage of third party software throughout the project."

Kellei: "So basically, Hoerwick's a thief."

Xil-Sta: "Must have some Russian blood."

Jyos: "Oh shutup."

Xil-Sta: "Hey, that's what the Americans would say."

Jyos: "We're not American! There's no American representation here."

Fusota-ri: "Reminds me, Zontna wasn't going to be online tonight."

Jyos: "Why does that remind you?"

Kellei: "Why?"

Kellei: "Dang lag. I spoke first. *wink*"

Fusota-ri: "Said he was tired from looking at pictures of California."

Everyone began to talking at once. The chatroom quickly became a gossip festival with some members joking while others tauting the end of Russian independence and other such nonsense.

Fusota-ri: "EVERYONE STOP TALKING."

Fusota-ri had to repeatedly post pleas for silence before anyone noticed his cries and the storm finally subsided.

Fusota-ri: "There is more. Let me speak."

Fusota-ri: "The code Kreigbrot and I explored wrapped systems concerning artificial intelligence but also integration into The World. We know that everything in The World is connected. You could infuse a grunty with immense knowledge about The World or just connect it to what I call The World Stream: the information flow system comprised of PNAK-6731 and PNAK-6734, among other things. But the really difficult part was figuring out how it worked and how to hack into it. That's more than we could do in three days, obviously. But that may not be necessary."

Kellei: "Necessary? For what? Aren't we trying to hack the game."

Fusota-ri: "Yes. Hold on and let me explain."

Fusota-ri: "There are various 'hints' - I'll call them - that there exists some unification of control over the system itself within the game."

Jyos: "Within? Why would Hoerwick do that?"

 _That's really stupid,_ Pavel thought. Every good computer scientist knew that your system was much more easily hackable when you made the keys accessible from inside the system. Pavel chuckled and shook his head. _That's it!_ he thought. _I'll make Hoerwick look like a mad genius who really is mad, as in, insane! That'll be authentic game story!_

Jyos: "What are these 'hints'?"

Fusota-ri: "It's complicated. Basically, the code introduces control vulnerabilities into entities but in such a way that it isn't possible to hack it so much from the outside as from the inside."

There was a pause. Everyone was really confused.

Fusota-ri: "It's hard to explain. But to put it simply, you're game character could be 'hacked' or controlled by external forces having nothing to do with your game controls or game physics."

Instantly, everyone in the audience thought of one thing: Mobashem.

Pavel leaned back in his chair. He nodded with a soft grin and thought of how fantastic such a scary monster would make a game, but then little by little, goosebumps rose and dotted the fleshy landscape of his back as the reality hit him. _Mikmik._ It had been over a month since the incident. What had happened to him? What would happen to them? If what Fusota-ri was suggesting was true, then administrative power could be easily obtained by simply playing the game itself, but at the same time, it was like running a gauntlet. With Mobashem on the loose, it could easily turn into a game of cat and mouse, resulting in the hackers all being captured like Mikmik. It would be safer to hack from the outside, but as Pavel considered this, Fusota-ri was ruling this option out.

The chatroom was filled with various questions and suggestions for cracking. It had become a game of verbal pong: a dozen hackers against two, primarily Fusota-ri since Kreigbrot couldn't comprehend the volley at the current rate. Outnumbered, Fusota-ri was still winning but not for the best. Again and again, he kept saying that cracking from the outside did not appear feasible without several months of study. By then, interest in the game would die, and possibly along with it, the user behind Mikmik.

What choice did they have? What would Doslad say? Just when things were looking better, a storm was brewing on the horizon.


	39. 39

## 2018:05:20:20:00 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

Lying back on his grubby sofa, the computer fanatic squeezed closed the covers of his most powerful pair of weapons, hoping to relieve the burning in their sockets from staring at a screen for four hours straight. Though painful, the day had been an overall success Dasomov thought. He had slept in that morning and relished every second of it. But before the sun had hit high noon, he had already dug into the paperwork of his next assignment and raced to clear up his desk before this evening's planned activities.

Hopping up and landing himself squarely on the padding of his power chair, Dasomov launched himself back into the cyber world.

He loaded up the chat application.

Doslad: "I'm back, everyone."

Zontna: "Thank God."

Jyos: "Things have been buzzing without you."

Doslad: "Glad to know I'm missed."

Fusota-ri: "We need to talk."

Doslad: "K. Let's launch a private window."

Jyos: "We need to talk to. I have some questions for you."

Doslad: "Sure. Give me a bit with Fusota-ri. I'm sure everyone has something for me."

Xil-Sta: "I do!"

Kellei: "Doslad! You're back!"

There were a number of other hopeful and encouraging greetings following, but they could be viewed upon his return, he thought. First order of business was dealing with the repository kings.

Fusota-ri informed him of their current dilemma and the technical details. All analysis up to that point had led him to believe they were locked out of the game, and that their simple hacks - such as the logging hack - were only found in the production code of the Japanese company, not in code code by Hoerwick. After several minutes of explanation, Fusota-ri had made the situation - and his suggested response - crystal clear.

Doslad: "So you think the best way is simply infiltration into the game?"

Fusota-ri: "I hate to say it, but yes. I've heard about Mikmik and about the players of the game in Japan who fell into comas. I know that it's possible to play as you do, as an observer character. But our artificial characters like observers don't have the same potential for power over The World as authentic game characters. I believe the secret to the game's power is within the game itself. I can't be certain, but the only way to tell is by exploring The World ourselves. Either that or..."

Doslad: "Yeah, I know, shut down the servers. I can't shut down the servers with Mikmik still on there, so it seems we don't have much of an alternative. I'm sure the other hackers are itching to play the game now. I've suddenly found myself with such an urge. I'd hate to bar the game closed to everyone, but I don't want to risk everyone."

Fusota-ri: "Yeah, Zontna mentioned that. You two have very good considerations."

Doslad: "Already, let me think about this. Jyos had something he wanted to talk to me about, so let me talk to him next and I'll keep thinking about this."

Fusota-ri: "Ok."

Dasomov closed the private chat window and opened a new one for Jyos but his mind remained on the previous problem. Since downloading the game, he had always believed it would be hackable like every other piece of software. Though it was true that three days worth of study barely scratched the surface of something like PNAK, it was also true that Zontna, Fusota-ri, and Kreigbrot could see the writing on the wall better than anyone else in the group. They knew how to examine code and what beautiful code looked like. Dasomov, as a security expert, believed he could eventually find a crack in the code, but if what Fusota-ri suggested was true, it could very easily take him several weeks even if it took everyone else several months. That kind of time would kill the project because everyone would lose interest.

On the other hand, playing the game could be both risky and fun. It's not like anyone would be at risk of falling into a coma anymore if they followed Dasomov's memorandum of avoiding headset usage. If they lost their avatars, they would be locked out of the game for sure, but that was better than dying, and if their efforts failed, they could find another guinea pig while they all acted as observers.

Dasomov shook his head and looked at the screen. Jyos had already posted a number of messages and was awaiting reply.

Jyos: "I needed to talk to you about a couple of things."

Jyos: "One is the game story. It's not as important at the moment and I know you have other things, but it'll be important eventually, so I'd like to talk about that soon."

Jyos: "Second, and more pressing, is the issue of Tovia or 'Taha' as they are now called in the game."

Jyos: "Taha claims they are being followed by someone and it's disconcerting."

Jyos: "Third, I noticed this game version isn't the same as the original one released in Japan. Which leads me to ask: Where did you get this game from?"

Too many topics to handle at once. The game story wasn't important. Xil-Sta was supposed to be working on that. The second topic was quite interesting. Apparently Anastasia had survived the Mobashem incident, and for this Dasomov was quite grateful. For a moment, he closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and breathed a soft sigh before returning to ponder the meaning of the rest of the story. It appeared she had changed her username to evade a follower. _Who would be following her? Why is that a problem?..._ Dasomov gulped as the realization hit him. Could it be the follower had latched on after the Mobashem incident?

Doslad: "Where's Tovia now?"

Jyos: "Probably in the game. Just look for Taha."

Doslad: "Great, thanks. I gotta see her. Let's finish later."

Jyos: "Wait!"

Doslad: "You need something else?"

Jyos: "What's you're relation to Taha (or Tovia)?"

Doslad: "Why do you ask?"

Jyos: "There are some funny things going on with this game, and by that I mean strange."

Doslad: "How's that?"

Jyos: "Well first of all, you freaked out when you realized Tovia had a headset."

Doslad: "How do you know they had a headset?"

Jyos: "That's another thing: It's a she. You just said so yourself."

Doslad: "Pardon, I may have mistyped it."

Jyos: "Her name is Anastasia."

Dasomov stared at the reply by Jyos. _How did he know her? Did they meet somewhere? Did she tell him?_ A dozen related thoughts raced through his mind. Jyos was acting suspicious, but if he were the follower of Anastasia, it would be suspicious for him to talk about it unless he was trying to throw off suspicion. The whole idea of him being a spy - or even Anastasia's father - seemed highly implausible though. Who was the man behind Jyos? And what was he suspicious about? What were his motives? What did he want in the game? Wasn't he just interested in assets in the beginning? Jyos was Jyos, Dasomov told himself.

He shook his head at himself. There were dozens of oddities about this whole situation: The servers were owned by Dasomov, the project was run by Dasomov, key decisions were made by him, he had called out to Tovia about her headset, and for all his involvement, no one knew anything about him. Naturally, everyone ought to be suspicious. In fact, it was rather peculiar that everyone had gone along so easily. Maybe the fascination with the game had left everyone complacent, and even if they had wanted to complain, they may have feared being booted from the project. Suddenly Dasomov felt like a dictator. Perhaps removing some of the shroud over his connections would be beneficial for the sake of support, but at at time like this, how much was safe?

Doslad: "How did you find out her name?"

Jyos: "She told me when I went to go meet her in The World."

Doslad: "I see."

Jyos: "She said we have a trust issue in the group. No one knows anyone else very well, but trust is going to be very important now that we have an intruder."

An intruder? Where was the follower?

Doslad: "Intruder? How is this person following Tovia? Are they hacking the game or what?"

Jyos: "I'm not sure. She's not sure. They contacted her, so she stayed in the game in case our chat client was hacked."

Doslad: "Interesting."

Jyos: "I think she's right."

Jyos: "The fact is, we don't trust each other enough. We've been working with each other for months, and I now I'm trying to figure out everyone's connection to this game."

Doslad: "And so you want to know my connection."

Jyos: "Exactly."

Doslad: "Maybe later."

Jyos: "WHY? Why can't you tell me now?"

Doslad: "It's complicated."

Jyos: "O..k? I don't understand."

Doslad: "I like playing games, that's all you or anyone needs to know. Why else would we be hacking the coolest game on the planet?"

Jyos: "Why do we have a strange version?"

Doslad: "I beg your pardon?"

Jyos: "Did you ever check the game version? It says 3.95. The original is 3.02."

Doslad: "Bug maybe, I don't know."

Jyos: "You're lying."

Doslad: "I don't know why the version is different. The way I got the game, it should be the official version."

Jyos: "How did you get it?"

Doslad: "From some of their servers. How else?"

Jyos: "Is this a special version or an unreleased version?"

Dasomov sighed. Obviously Jyos was quite clever or at least very persistent. The original version was obviously going to be different from Dasomov's copy, but even the drastic difference was surprising to Dasomov. Secretly to Dasomov it meant one thing: that the game had still been in development when it had been lost due to the fire at CC Corp. There were probably additional upgrades that had been lost as well, but at least Dasomov had managed to capture quite a few from the honey-pot he had stolen from.

Doslad: "I guess you could say that."

Jyos: "Ok... That's all you needed to say. Sounds fun."

Dasomov sighed again. _He's a kid, I bet._

Doslad: "Anything else?"

Jyos: "What's your relation to Anastasia?"

Dasomov paused for a moment to contrive an answer. How inquisitive was Jyos? Could Dasomov get away with something simple? He tried the most honest lie that came to mind.

Doslad: "Friend."

Jyos: "Friend in real life?"

Doslad: "Yes."

Jyos: "I see. Ok, that's all I needed to know there."

Doslad: "Ok, good. I need to check on Tovia in The World."

Jyos: "Taha."

Doslad: "Oh. Yes. Taha now. Thanks."

With that, Dasomov closed the private chat window and loaded up the launcher for the game cloaking itself in an ever-thickening mysterious aura: The World.


	40. 40

## 2018:05:20:21:10 - The World Neuvo: μ Test Phase Bolgograd

Inside the zone there existed a single replica of a Russian Orthodox Church. Gemphl had stopped in front of it so that Dasomov could admire the beautiful craftsmanship of the 3D artist. Truly, he had a remarkable team he thought. Subconsciously, he thought the most attractive feature about the structure was its lack of gargoyles. However, the more he remarked on their absence, the more brain power he devoted to it.

Making friends seemed like it should come naturally when playing a game, yet the dream of playing for fun seemed a long ways off, whereas the possibility of friendship seemed right around the corner. It had only taken Dasomov a minute before loading the game to observe the comradery of the hackers through the chat client. Everyone was somehow managing well after all this time, with or without his presence. He could continue to be a quiet observer or finally open himself. What was holding him back?

"Elena," he grumbled with a voice tinged by a silent fury. Elena. A name that hadn't been uttered for over a decade but still carried in demonic fashion the bitter memories of deceit and betrayal.

"Has she still kept your heart hard after all this time?" said a voice.

Gemphl turned to face an avatar remarkably similar yet plainly distinguishable from Tovia.

"I take it you're there, Gemphl, right?"

"I am," he replied. "Sorry you can't see me."

"That's alright. I needed to speak to you," said Taha.

"About your follower?"

"Yes. Who..."

"Jyos told me."

"Ah. Good. Evan told you."

"Is Evan, Jyos?"

"Yes," Taha replied. "We introduced ourselves here in The World. And I think you should introduce yourself to him."

Dead silence passed between them for a moment, but Taha quickly pushed it aside.

"You need to give up on this crazy fear over that woman," she continued. "She isn't coming back. She's gone! She doesn't care about what you're doing now! You're not going to get into trouble for..."

"I know, I know, I know," Gemphl interrupted. "I've thought about this for years. And I let down my guard for relationships. You know that. But I haven't... I can't do the same for people from hacker websites. You don't know what their motives are."

"Honestly, uncle! Don't you realize... Why would you think a bunch of gamers on a game cracking site would care about anything other than gaming? It's not like this is Affanim dot R U. Nobody is after black money; they want a game!" There was a gentle pause and a softening of her voice as she appealed to both halves of his brain, emotion and reason. "It's not like anyone will throw you in jail over a foreign game. ... Who cares?"

"Then who's following you?" Gemphl shot back. "And why are you concerned?"

"Because... because they're creeping me out."

"Pfft."

"No listen! They came and visited me in the hospital!"

"What?" Dasomov was stunned. Evan hadn't mentioned anything about a hospital visit.

"They inquired as to how to get into the game. They were posing as a doctor of psychological health when they came to visit me at the hospital."

"And you don't find that disconcerting?" said Gemphl.

"I do, but I don't think this person is any member of our group! Think about it! They would already know all the details about how to access the game by now."

"And this gives me a load of confidence about people over the internet."

"I didn't say 'trust everyone'. I'm saying you should trust the most innocent-looking people involved. Their gain is tied to your success."

What she said could not have rung more true had it been burned onto Dasomov's hard-drive and loaded every day with the operating system. Everything - every single bit of the project - depended on his leadership, and if he were to go down, so would everything else. None of the other team members had any legitimate reason to take him down unless they were somehow harboring vengeful feelings and wanted to ruin the experience for everyone else. Still, there were other ways to do that without killing the game.

Taha again broke the silence. "Trust them! You need it. I need it. I'm going to share some personal details if you don't want to take the initiative."

"Seems you already have," Gemphl shot back. "You're name is highly personal, and unless you can get Evan to think you're lying, he now has a clue to finding you in real life."

"Hardly."

"No, missy. He does."

"He doesn't have the motivation," she replied. "You focus too much on technical capability and not on human capability. It may be technically possible to find each of us, just as I found you, but there has to be willingness and persistence... and most importantly, interest. Without interest, there's no willingness nor persistence. Evan doesn't care about who we are in real life. The real problem... is this person stalking me."

"The mystery doctor, eh?"

"Yes."

"At the hospital, you said."

"Yes."

"Did you check out their background?"

"Yes. The reports from the north pole regarding the Bureau of Psychological Health, section C, which he claims he's from, are devoid of any record of him."

"So he's a liar."

"Worse. Apparently, he was able to get the doctor to prevent me from leaving until he had interviewed me."

"KGB."

"I guess, but why would they have interest in the game? My only answer is they want the power to put people into comas."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Why not? Wouldn't that kind of power be super dangerous?"

"The KGB can just shoot people," Gemphl pointed out. "For the comatose power to even be remotely useful, they'd need to get a few million people or all the members of unwanted target groups to play the game. That's a pathetic strategy. There must be something else they want."

"Like what?"

What indeed. Dasomov reflected on the details. The World was just a game. Admittedly, putting a bunch of Japanese kids into comatose would boost Russian morale, but in the long run, it would be nothing more than an annoying ploy that could turn sour. By the time such a stunt would even be useful, people would have stopped playing the game. Besides, the game's service had already ended in Japan. Why would the Russian government - or anyone for that matter - take interest in this game other than for playing the game itself? Being an avid gamer was hardly a reason for risking being caught as a fraudulent doctor.

"Any other details about this guy?"

"He called himself Evan Yeltsin."

"Fake name."

Taha shrugged. "I guess. Anyways... He asked alot of piercing questions about how to get into the game, like how to play it. I figured he was curious as to why I was playing a game whose service had ended."

"And you said?"

"Very little."

"I see," said Gemphl. "I'm curious as to how you escaped Mobashem when Mikmik hadn't."

"I heard your cries and threw off my headset."

"Good girl."

Taha smiled. "I guess I got lucky."

"Beyond words."

"My father is angry with me and doesn't want me to play the game anymore, but he doesn't know about when I play anyways."

"I'm sure your parents would be furious with me if they knew I'd let you in."

"They don't have the slightest clue about your involvement, and only this 'Yeltsin' knows about my gaming."

"So he wanted to play, huh?"

"Yes."

"Well..." begin Gemphl. "I wonder... Did he say anything about your headset?"

"No." Taha shook her her. "I don't think he knows I had one. He just knows I had trauma." After a second, Taha's face lit up. "But he did say he wanted to experience the game firsthand, so maybe..."

Behind his monitor, Dasomov gleamed with a dastard smile. "Maybe he'd like to be our next guinea pig."

"Perfect!"

"If he comes again, play you're usual self as you did in the hospital, but show him the game forum. Tell him he has to give us the password 'Ottovon ninety-three', and that way, we'll know exactly who he is."

Taha smiled as big as her avatar would allow. "You're so clever."

"As are you."

"Thanks!"

"Get ready. The best is yet to come, or perhaps the worst."

Taha tilted her head to indicate her befuddlement.

Gemphl continued, "I've been informed by our member Fusota-ri that control over this world is possible within this world and that trying to hack this running server might be impossible if not take several months. We may not have that kind of time for Mikmik, assuming he's still alive. In any case, if there is power to be found within this world, then we need to race to get it. However, under no circumstances are you or anyone else to ever mention that possibility, that is, the possibility of power over this world from within it."

"Yes sir!"

"Good girl. I'll get to see you again soon."

"It'd be nice if you had another avatar. I'd at least like to see another you."

"That'd be tricky. I'm not sure how I can get it back, so you'll just have to accept my ghostly presence for the time being. But it'll be safer this way, and monsters like Mobashem don't have any influence over me."

Taha looked downcast.

"Cheer up," said Gemphl. "We'll be playing this game together soon enough. Just one step at a time. Maybe when we obtain that administrative power, we'll be able to fulfill two goals at once: building The World and freeing captive players."

Taha smiled. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," replied Gemphl.

At that, Dasomov logged off the game.


	41. 41

## 2018:05:22:09:12 - Real Life: Anastasia's Room

"Anastasia!" said a faint voice from downstairs, muffled by the white wooden door of the princess' lair. Little did her guardians know of their daughter's true identity as a warrior princess. Yet it was not the sword she bore, but a panel of keys and an obedient rodent who always nestled nicely against the palm of her hand. Day in and day out, she would sharpen her skills and test her talents, all for fun and games, rarely dreaming they would be challenged in the world more real than her kingdom.

"You have a visitor," the voice continued.

Anastasia looked up from her pillowy perch looked towards the door. _Visitor?_ She wasn't expecting anyone. Then again, _Could it be my uncle?_ Having been sitting cross-legged with her laptop, she needed a minute to untangle herself and allow blood to race again through tunnels of her feet. Standing for a moment beside the bed, she stretched her back and gave a soft yawn. When she was finished, she turned to head to the door and a sinking feeling hit her gut the same moment as...

 _*knock knock knock*_

Her visitor had walked up to her door and not made so much as a peep for a greeting. Even her uncle Dasomov would have said something.

Anastasia quickly spun and grabbed her laptop. She closed it up and shoved it, her keyboard, and mouse under her mattress. _Drat! What about the volume?! Not enough time to change it, now!_

She walked over to her bedroom's entryway and, slowly opened the door, found herself greeted by the devil in white, "Doctor Yeltsin".

"Good morning, miss Anastasia," he began. "I thought I ought to check up on you since you hadn't reported anything to the hospital in some time.

"I've been fine, thanks," replied Anastasia, on her way to closing the door. _Wait! What about Dasomov's plan?_ she thought. Reopening the door, she found her efforts reinforced by the push of Evgeni. They were both surprised by this sudden mutual agreement.

"I see you realize it's not wise to close the door on your doctor," said Evgeni, grinning.

"What do you want?" Anastasia shot back.

"I want to know more," began Evgeni, pushing the door open even wider, "about the details of your condition. For instance..." He put his hand on her shoulder and gently nudged her back into her room while he moved in. "You never gave me a chance to analyze the causes of your condition. Such is of great importance." He gestured her over to a chair. "Have a seat, and allow me to explain."

Anastasia sat down on the chair by her desk, all the while eying Yeltsin.

Evgeni for his part leaned over her and put his hand on her desk, softening his facial expression to appear like a father about to educate a young child on the importance of using a crosswalk without discussing the bloody mess of a car accident.

"As a doctor," he began, "many people come to me and tell me about their various problems, but like you, some details are embarrassing to talk about, so they tend to exclude a number of details. However, their medical problems tend to be very complex and intertwined with many, many things. To resolve their psychological problems, I have to trace these problems back to their roots so that I can correct them. However, I can't do this unless I know the path that leads to those problems."

"I see," Anastasia said in an innocent tone with a touch of guilt.

Evgeni smiled, externally with sympathetic understanding, internally with the slyness of a snake. "Good." He paused for a moment to let his approval sink in. "Are you willing to show me, then?"

Anastasia hesitated. _I can't show him my laptop! He's liable to take it from me or put spyware on it or steal my identity._ "Do you have a laptop?"

"With me?" He acted surprised. "I thought you might."

"Well... mine is being repaired or, eh." She spun her hands and crimped her fingers as if to describe a birds nest made of steel wool. "It... Since I played the game, it got messed up somehow."

"I might know a thing or two if you let me see it."

"That's ok. It'll get done. It's better not to have it working at the moment because... it gives me an excuse to read books," she lied.

"Very well," Evgeni responded, righting his posture and hinting at a future sigh. It never came. Instead, he looked back at her with a grin. "I happen to have brought one just in case. Wait on me to fetch it, and I'll be just a moment."

With that, Evgeni stepped out of the room.

Anastasia breathed a sigh. So far, she felt like she was pitching a no-hitter, but the last at-bat had worn her out and the inning was long from over.

In accordance with his word, the mysterious Dr. Yeltsin returned exactly one minute later carrying with him a flat electronic device the same color as his heart.

"How do you like my baby?" he said, setting it carefully on her desk and opening up the screen. "Now, would you care to show me the website where I could find it?"

 _This guy's an idiot,_ Anastasia thought. _I could easily take him to a malware site first and get his laptop infected. Then again... he'd know who did it. Or maybe this laptop is disposable, and it doesn't matter._

Anastasia put her finger on the touchpad at the front of the device. Loading up the web browser, she surfed to the game forum where it all began.

"Here," she said.

Evgeni leaned over to look close at the site. "The game is on this site? Where?"

"You have to make a request on the forum. Ask for 'The World' and give them the password, Ottovon ninety-three."

"There's a password?"

"It's a secret project. The owners don't want just anyone, so it's an invite-only game."

"Very interesting."

"Have fun. Be careful."

Evgeni turned to look at Anastasia and smiled. "I'm a doctor. I always be careful." He waited for her to look at him so he could read her face, but she ignored him. Perhaps she had resigned herself, he thought. Was she now putty in his hands? Would she tell him anything? "How long must I await for a reply?"

"A day or two. The owners are busy, so it may take awhile, but normally the response time is a day."

"Excellent! I can't wait." Evgeni closed his laptop. "However, as I have other affairs to attend to today, I'll wait until this evening." He stood upright again and cheerfully smiled. "Thank you again for seeing me, Miss Anastasia. I shall be a good study and learn as much as I can about this game so I can be of further assistance to you and those like you who suffer from such games. These are not trivial things, I can assure you. But rest assured, you're in good hands when you trust."

Anastasia could only mumble out a tasteless, "K." She had nothing more to say to him, not even her usual polite and pretentious parting to match the fake farewell he gave her on his way out. _Troublemaker,_ she thought. Then grinning, she added, _We've got YOU pegged now!_


	42. 42

## 2018:05:24:20:09 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment

Everyone had been called together for an important meeting in the chat client. It had taken a couple days to get everyone notified, and in the meantime, Dasomov wasn't interested in hearing anything new. The word was out: Meet on the 24th and be on and listening by 7PM. Early conversation was a ruckus with gossip and musings about what this was all about, but the chaotic chatter was soon silenced when Dasomov was certain everyone was online except Anastasia, whose absence he understood.

Commanding the attention of nearly all his team members, Dasomov began explaining the full situation as best as he could.

Doslad: "I'm going to make everything clear as best as I can. First and foremost, my objective has been to hack and improve the Cyber Connect game The World. Some of you have become curious as to where it comes from, and that will be revealed in time. But what's important for our situation is that the game version we have is an unreleased developer version, version 3.95."

q5corbo was the first to butt in. "AWESOME!"

Xil-Sta: "Wait, what?"

A few others chimed in, but order was quickly restored by Dasomov, aided by Zontna and some of those Dasomov sensed were senior (older) members.

Doslad: "Listen. The discrepancy in game version means that we have to work with a few features that were NOT in the original game, one of which is probably Krikle a.k.a. Mobashem. Mobashem is not part of the original game story, which makes it all the more peculiar why Mobashem started spouting part of the Epitaph of Twilight."

More murmurings hit the screen, primarily concerning the Epitaph, a core mystery of the game.

Doslad: "Shh."

Doslad: "Mobashem captured our member Mikmik, who was apparently wearing a headset. Our only hint at his condition is that a czech in his twenties fell into a coma about the same time. My objective since then has been to try to restore his consciousness. Without Mikmik alive and active, we can't be certain this game will ever be safe for us to use and share publicly."

Doslad: "I know it's a pain to wait so long. Believe me. I've waited too, and it's not fun. However, it's for the best. Trust me."

Doslad: "That said, we have an issue of trust in our group."

Xil-Sta: "^_-"

Doslad: "We've been with each other since February."

Kellei: "It looks better when you do it the other way."

Kellei: "Like this:"

Kellei: "-_^"

Doslad: "Or at least some of us."

Jyos: "Three months."

Doslad: "Cut it out."

Xil-Sta: "No it doesn't."

q5corbo: "o_0"

Jyos: "Hey, I'm just saying. 0_0"

q5corbo: "(9_(9"

Doslad: "Anyways..."

There was a pause.

Zontna: "Continue."

Doslad: "As I was saying, there's been a trust issue. Most of us don't know each other very well. I'd like to get to know you better, but I personally was waiting to play with you in-game before any kind of friendship developed."

Xil-Sta: "Long time to wait."

q5corbo: "We'll get there!"

Doslad: "That said, we may just have that chance."

q5corbo: "Hurray!"

Doslad: "We have a troublesome situation. According to Zontna, Fusota-ri, Kregbot, and their team, dissecting the code will take us months before we can find a hack. This is because the code was very well written, very well assembled. Hoerwick is a genius, and how he put this thing together is simply incredible. I'm sure it has holes of sorts, but its viruses are of an entirely different breed: they occur in-game."

Kreigbrot: "Kreigbrot. See. You can see my username. To the left."

Doslad: "Sorry."

Doslad: "The code uses protocol PNAK, among other things, but more importantly for us, our own code was not integrated completely with the system prior to the Mikmik / Mobashem incident. Our code is our cheap in-game administrative panels and our flying ghost observer entities, among other things. Even our game units and buildings aren't correctly integrated into the codebase, which is why things load and are visible but don't do anything like we'd like. In a way, this is advantageous, but in another way, it's not."

Xil-Sta: "-_^ -_0 o_0 ^_0"

Xil-Sta: "What was yours again Kellei?"

Kellei: "You got mine."

q5corbo: "He means mine. (9_(9"

Jyos: "Stop goofing off and let Doslad explain."

Doslad: "It's advantageous because Mobashem can't capture any of our ghost camera units. Hence, we can always enter the game and examine things without being impacted. It's disadvantageous because we can't take full control over The World according to Fusota-ri, who says that full integration of entities with The World Stream enables them to engage in this information - and power - channeling system."

Brofin: "That explains alot."

Doslad: "There's more."

Doslad: "There is some integration into The World because Mobashem CAN detect us, even if it can't do anything about it. Furthermore, we know the power of Mobashem appears to be limited to just a cleaning unit meant for punishing violators and cheaters."

Jyos: "Old news to everyone but Fusota-ri."

Fusota-ri: "What's this?"

Doslad: "Mobashem is triggered by Krickle, a smaller unit."

Fusota-ri: "Yeah, yeah, I know that. What's the cheater part?"

Jyos: "My theory is that Mobashem is only designed for dealing with cheaters because it only comes out when we open our control panels... and wear headsets."

Fusota-ri: "I knew the headset part. I wasn't aware of your complete theory. Sorry."

Jyos: "It's fine."

Doslad: "Mobashem can trap anyone wearing a headset within The World somehow. The only way to avoid your consciousness being trapped in The World is to NOT wear a headset, so I forbid it. However, this may put us at a disadvantage in finding the access point to the administrative power of The World. Yes, that's a new idea, and that may not be true."

Doslad: "In any case, what's more important is that Mobashem can capture our avatars, leaving our PCs unable to move within The World and interact with other units connected to The World Stream."

Jyos: "So... let me guess. We have to enter The World with avatars but we don't get to use our simple admin panels, correct?"

Zontna: "Precisely."

Doslad: "Precisely."

Fusota-ri: "Precisely."

q5corbo: "HAHAHAHA"

Doslad: "So we have a choice: Either spend the next several months analyzing boring code... or play in The World."

Unanimously everyone chat-shouted: "PLAY IN THE WORLD."

Doslad: "I figured that would be the case."

q5corbo: "We can do it! We're Russian in!"

Xil-Sta: "Time to take on The World!"

Kreigbrot: "I wonder how this will go. What is the plan?"

Doslad: "One last order of business."

q5corbo: "X) I'm SO EXCITED!"

Doslad: "We have a stalker who will be joining us soon."

Kellei: "0)_0)"

Zontna: "Details?"

q5corbo: "The Tovia follower, right?"

Doslad: "Yes, the Tovia follower. Tovia is now Taha. Her stalker has requested permission to join us in the game itself. Apparently, they don't know about our chat system, and I want it to STAY that way. No one talk about anything related to this chat or our relationships with each other while we're in the game. REREAD THAT LINE IF YOU MUST."

Jyos: "Radio silence."

Doslad: "Not quite. You may speak freely in chat, but NOT within the game. I want the stalker to think we're all just gamers looking for excitement."

Jyos: "How do we identify this stalker? What's their username?"

Doslad: "I've given them the username Noro301."

Jyos: "Sounds odd."

Doslad: "It's 'noro' as in 'noroma'."

Jyos: "?"

Doslad: "You don't get it?"

Jyos: "No."

Doslad: "Good. Neither will they."

Fusota-ri: "You're so mean. And clever."

Doslad: ":)"

q5corbo: "Hey look! Doslad smiled!"

Xil-Sta: "WOW"

Jyos: "I have one more thing to ask."

Doslad: "Go ahead."

Jyos: "Xil-Sta and I were going over some of the fragments of the Epitaph of Twilight found by Faerkinder, and one of them refers to Arche Koeln."

Jyos: "I'd like to test it's meaning."

Doslad: "What do you mean? What does it say?"

Jyos: " _Great streams of water, so high and fair, Arche Koeln! Part in two, show us the way._  
 _Lead us to Land's End! Begging, praying, Saya kneeling. Coldly rivers flow._ "

Jyos: "If you recall, the part of the Epitaph that Mobashem spoke alluded to not being able to reach Land's End."

Doslad: "So you think something might be there?"

Jyos: "*shrug* I'm not sure, but I'd like to try. If I could get a search party to go with me, that'd be great."

Doslad: "Granted. And since I want to keep Tovia - or Taha - away from Noro301, I assign her to your party."

Xil-Sta: "Taha's a girl?"

q5corbo: "WOOT!"

Zontna: "If you don't mind, Doslad, I'd like to sit out and observe. Even though I'm sure I could learn a great deal by playing, I'll only jump in as a player if I think the situation calls for it."

Doslad: "Ok, sounds good. I have to observe as well since my avatar is stolen/lost for the time being."

q5corbo: "Can I join the search party? It sounds like fun!"

Doslad: "No, *sigh* I want you to entertain and distract Noro301."

q5corbo: "Ok! Consider it done!"

Doslad: "But give him liberty and find out what he wants."

Doslad: "We need to know why he wants to play the game in the first place."

Xil-Sta: "He wants to find a plushy grunty. Enough said."

Kellei: "Does it have feathers?"

Doslad: "Fusota-ri, I'd like you to also be in the party with Jyos."

Fusota-ri: "Acknowledged."

Doslad: "Very good. Let the game begin!"


	43. 43

## 2018:05:24:20:25 - Real Life: 23rd Division Headquarters, Moscow, Russia

Reading a stack of papers the size of a handbook, Boris Molotov spun in his comfy executive office chair to face his smirking lieutenant leaning over his desk.

"I have it," said Evgeni.

"You have what?" Boris demanded in his belligerent, unimpressed tone of voice - the same he used for insulting his drug-addicted nephew whenever he came in boasting of his new pill.

"Access."

"To the AI?" Boris looked up and childlike interest bolted through his voice at the speed of light. "How? When? What's it like? Details, man!"

Evgeni chucked and looked down for a moment. "I have access to the game. I just received confirmation of my request for entry. In less than an hour, I'll have a little digital character scouring the World in search of our precious jewel."

"Finally, some real progress!" Boris shouted. "I was reading your report, and it's boring but complete. I noted you dug up some dirt on this Dasomov. It says..." He glanced down at a papers on his lap and raised a few pages to check a page underneath. "He had a relationship with Iskra over a decade ago and was operating a black market service until she turned him in. Fascinating..." His voice trailed off.

"Isn't it? Had I known sooner that agent Iskra had a connection with him, I would have asked her for more details."

"Did you talk to her recently?"

"I did."

"What did she say?"

"She said he was a very reckless character at the time, not as much fun, so she didn't feel any personal loss turning him in. Being his girlfriend was only a side-effect of the assignment. His black market ring was busted up thoroughly, but there was those connected to the ring who were in legitimate business. They were all questioned and exposed what little they had in relation. Notably, those who were friends of Dasomov helped him recover social status and livelihood after prison by getting him back into the industry by giving him legitimate work after his prison sentence had completed. He's been living in that run-down apartment ever since. I highly suspect his exposure and punishment has turned him into the recluse he now is."

"And that could mean he is most adept at hiding things," Boris remarked.

"Indeed. He's in software security now."

"So I read in your report."

"It's possible he wants the AI for his work or maybe for some analytical purposes. But I haven't narrowed down any excuse he would have for opening up the game for people to play."

"It's a cover up! What else could it be?"

"That's my primary answer, but it gets more complicated than that."

"Oh?"

"Dasomov has never been to an AI seminar or anything related to artificial intelligence in his life. All of his work is security and cracking. He seems to have no use whatsoever for the World other than to figure out how to hack into it. And - as I'll soon find out - if he has invited a large number of people thus far, there's a very distinct possibility that he's doing all this just for play."

Boris eyed his subordinate as though he said Putin was wearing a toupee. "Be serious," he grumbled. "There's no way, no reason..." He fell silent, and his head tilted to nearly touching his shoulder. In his eyes, a far-away look appeared, suggesting to Evgeni some natural sense regarding humanity had infiltrated the mind of a colonel of the most suspecting organization in the entire world. "Maybe they could be playing..."

"I'll find out soon enough."

"Do that," Boris said, quickly returning to himself. "I want a full report on what you find. I'm tired of waiting for a trickle of details."

"Yes, sir."

"You're dismissed."

With that, the dutiful devil turned on his heel and headed for the door.

"One last thing," Boris called out. "Use Iskra if you need her."

## 2018:05:24:20:30 - Real Life: University Hospital, Brno, Czech Republic

 _*boop* ... *boop* ... *boop*_ Periodically, a thin blue line would break from the straight and narrow path to zig-zag in repetitious pattern.

Below the sheets nearby, the composer of this digital music directed his audience to the tune of a lullaby as his master lay silent, pushing up z's and entertaining another audience.

A white-vested authority breathed a heavy sigh and shook his head to a sorrowful beat. "If only there were more we could do for him," he said to his short, plump companion.

The other man adjusted his glasses and rubbed his wide, square jaw with a firm stroke. "I don't have the slightest clue what the problem is any more than you, but my conviction is firm. He must stay."

"The family is considering taking him off life support."

"And you refused, correct?"

The taller man sighed.

The plump man continued. "I know it's about money for them, but as doctors, we need to hold true to preserving life. Even if the rest of Europe decides euthanasia is moral, we made an oath to preserve life long before the politicians and younger generations said otherwise. Remember that oath."

"But if our own authorities tell us not to continue..." His voice tiptoed into oblivion.

Neither spoke for an agonizing minute.

Sensing his partner's uneasiness, the doctor of conviction closed with his solemn benediction. "Do good always, whatever the cost, whatever the foes you may produce, so that you may shine bright before all men as a true image of mercy, as all doctors should. I cannot tell you how to handle the future, but I encourage you in the now."

Both of them knew it would be a struggle against authorities and family were they to act on their own accord in this situation, and it may even cost them more than just the keys to enter the building every morning. Nevertheless, it was too soon to worry... perhaps.


	44. 44

## 2018:05:24:21:23 - The World Neuvo: α Notre Borealis

Logging into The World one by one, the hackers generated a harmless storm of blue tornadoes created by the rings that rose from avatar feet to head whenever the avatar entered a zone.

Before them lay the hollow shell of their grand, new root town. Using their simple administration panels, they had shaped the landscape, loaded and placed various buildings, and set up the weather. Everything appeared complete from the looks of it, but the aching fact was that it was entirely inanimate. The NPCs were lifeless models. The building walls could be walked through - as if they weren't there. None of the plants grew or waved in the artificial wind. To the greater populace, it could provide joy were it a mere painting, frozen in time and virtual memory. But to its makers, it was a glimmer of the dawn of a new creation one day to fulfill all their dreams of a pixel-based reality.

Xil-Sta was the first to log in, but q5corbo was the first to rush in, shouting, "Hurray! It's The World!" As he ran away, a few others logged in, including Kellei and Brofin.

"Yes! It feels great to be gaming again," said Kellei. "How would I waste my life away without games?"

"You could get a girlfriend," teased Xil-Sta.

"Only if she were a gamer. I rarely leave my room. Flirting with my monitor is more fun," Kellei confessed.

The others kept up the lighthearted teasing for a moment, but as smooth as the dying of waves, their attention shifted to their digital play-scape.

A half-hour later, everyone was so distracted that they nearly missed the arrival of their newest playmate.

"What's up, boys!" said Nono301 in a jolly tone as he approached a group of hackers gathered in a circle.

"I'm going to add a paper-airplane gun," spouted q5corbo to his companions, ignoring Noro301.

"For... launching airplanes, I assume," replied Xil-Sta.

"Yup!"

"Why? You can't do much with that in the game."

"It's for fun," objected q5corbo. "What else is the game for?"

Xil-Sta shrugged and smiled in agreement.

"Indeed, what else could it be for?" said Noro301.

All eyes finally turned to him. Noro301 stood there silent, expecting a reply. Everyone else stood there for a moment waiting for him to answer his own question.

q5corbo finally broke the silence. "Games are for FUN!" he said, pumping his fist in the air like a super hero.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm really interested in exploring the dungeons right now," said Xil-Sta.

"Sounds like an awesome idea!" the others added.

"They'll probably be the same as before," Kellei noted.

Xil-Sta smiled. "Ah, but this is a special edition of the game."

"A special edition?" Noro301 asked.

At that moment, everyone looked again at Noro301 and suddenly remembered he wasn't one of them.

"How so?" Noro301 continued.

Brofin looked at Xil-Sta and nodded. "Duty calls."

Xil-Sta turned to Noro301. "I take it you don't know much about the World."

"Pardon my being a newbie," apologized Noro301.

"That's fine. Normally I'd yell 'noooob' at you but since it's been quite some time since anyone has played this game, it's understandable."

"Thanks!"

"So... let me ask you first, what brought you to this game?"

There was a pause and an confused look on Noro301's face. Behind the screen, a certain government agent was playing his cards carefully. _Do they already know my mission?_ he wondered. _No, not possible. Maybe they're asking about why I want to play._

"I just like playing video games, and I heard about this one."

"This one isn't ready yet for..." public release, Xil-Sta would have said, had he not caught his tongue. "...noobs."

"Why's that?"

Kellei chimed in, "Because the monsters are super dangerous..." His voice transitioned from a cautionary father to that of a child telling ghost stories, complemented by a telling face. "... and you might be put in a coma."

"Sounds thrilling," Noro301 replied. "I have read this game put many victims into comas, but that doesn't frighten me."

"Oh good," said Xil-Sta. "So what intrigues you about this game then? Why did you want to play."

"Maybe I like the idea of playing with doom."

"Excellent! We'll have to take you along on our adventures, then."

"Fantastic!"

"But I'm still curious. What's your real reason for playing the game?"

"Why do you ask?" said Noro301. _That will catch him off-guard if he's prying too much._

Xil-Sta suavely replied, "Because as a pro at this game and your host in this world, I want to see to it that you have the best experience."

The others smiled. If they could have, all of them would have chuckled silently with a jiggle of their shoulders - all knowing full well the personality behind Xil-Sta.

Evgeni grinned as he sat at his game console. _Are they really opening up to me this easy? I ought to be careful. Still... they seem to be average gamers so far._ Evgeni couldn't decide what he was seeing. A number of years had passed since he had been actively in the field as a spy. Investigations he lived and breathed, interrogations he loved, but exposing himself was in every way contrary to his nature. Yet for all he considered, the benefits seemed to outweigh any potential problems. With his credentials and KGB-style tracing, he could easily find where the servers were located, so if they booted him from the game, it wouldn't be long before he was back online, or so he thought. He could go for the gold now, but that might draw suspicion and then he might waste valuable connections. But how long would it take to gain their trust. Would these gamers trust him quickly? He needed to find out.

"Well in that case," Noro301 said, "Take me to the greatest fun place you know of in this world."

q5corbo shouted, "Onward to the dungeons!"


	45. 45

## 2018:05:24:21:24 - The World Neuvo: μ Test Phase Bolgograd

The blue rings lowered around the avatar of Jyos. He was back in the World and primed to solve this great mystery. What was so unique about this special edition of the game? Would they find the source of ultimate power? Would the fragments of the Epitaph lead them there? Jyos marched forward with determination.

 _Step 1: Find help._

He didn't have to look long. Taha called out to him from behind a wall in their no-clip, facade city.

"Jyos!"

He turned to look. "Tovia?"

Taha stepped out and looked to the left and right to see if the coast was clear.

"I'm pleased to see you're online."

"Anyone else?"

"No one followed me," said Jyos. "But I would like you to follow _me_."

Taha gave him a confused look.

"I'm investigating the... let me back up, here. The meeting over chat was informative. I won't... spoil the details." Jyos looked around just to double check. He wasn't nervous about being followed - or so he told himself - but the suspicion wouldn't leave his mind, so he decided to err on the side of caution. "During the meeting, I told Doslad I wanted to investigate a site mentioned in the Epitaph. I'm curious if we'll find something useful. He said to bring you along."

"I see."

"We'll also be taking Fusota-ri, our Japanese guru."

"Do we know where the... doctor... is?"

"Not yet, but when he shows up, I'll get a message from Doslad in chat."

"Can we wait until then?"

"Definitely. I'm in no hurry," he lied. Though there was no immediate rush out of necessity, Evan deeply wanted to move forward with his mission, and every second that ticked away added to his internal jitters. There were so many excited things ahead, he thought. _Perhaps we'll crack this mystery of the game. Maybe we'll discover some secret treasure? There's got to be something to this! It'd be boring if the Epitaph words did nothing._ A frown formed on his avatar's face.

"Thank you," said Taha in a soft, meek voice. She turned to look at him and smiled. "It should be great fun to play on this game once all this mess is settled, won't it?"

"Yeah..." replied Jyos in a dreamy voice, looking up at the sky.

"Maybe we'll get the fairgrounds to work."

"Wouldn't that be something?" Jyos smiled.

"It will be awesome to see the kinds of tools and weapons and gadgets everyone eventually adds. And buildings and landscapes too..."

"Yeah, those will all be cool..."

Their voices drifted into silence. The seconds drifted along, but every now and then, Taha would make an optimistic comment and Jyos would confirm it. _It's nice to be with someone who is looking forward to the game as much as I am_ , he thought. _Then again, everyone is looking forward to the game... but maybe not as optimistically. Well, then there's q5corbo, but..._ He paused to think. He had been trying to invent excuses to consider Taha's remarks and companionship a unique case, but finally he forced himself to admit the fundamental feature of attraction: Anastasia was a girl.

Jyos turned to look at Taha. Admittedly, he couldn't see a real girl - just a 3D mesh supposedly resembling a female, scantily clad and semi-attractive but incredibly generic and not even remotely as beautiful nor precious as the real McCoy. It made him wonder what Anastasia actually looked like. Was she blond? Brunette? Thin and sexy or pudgy and overweight? Tall, short? Raspy or sweet? Overbearing or submissive? He had played games for too long, and the only feminine company to have crossed his path in the past year was his land-lord's wife, if she could be even be considered company. Loneliness built a cloud of thoughts over his mind that was still hovering there when Fusota-ri showed up.

"Are we ready?" Fusota-ri asked. "Did you explain to her?"

Jyos turned to look at him and then looked back at Taha. "Taha, this is Fusota-ri."

"I gathered," she remarked.

"Good. Let's be on our way, then," finished Jyos.

"Where are we going? And wait! Aren't we going to wait for the... doctor's location info?" Taha objected.

"Ah, yes. Sorry," apologized Jyos.

"Doctor?" Fusota-ri asked.

There was silence for a few seconds as Evan checked the chat messages.

Jyos finally broke the silence with the declaration, "Yes! He's been found and in alpha Notre Borealis. I guess he just showed up."

"Phew..." sighed Taha. "So where are we going?"

"To the great falls," answered Jyos, "Arche Koeln!"


	46. 46

## 2018:05:24:21:55 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment, Saratov, Russia

The glint of lamplight off his glasses posited itself as a incessant irritation to the concentrating coder as a fly on a dry day would tickle the eyelashes of a lion viewing its prey, hoping for a sip of water and finding none. In the white of the man's eyes grew tiny canals of bright red in proportion to the power and duration of his gaze, depths growing in simultaneity.

After an hour of persistent disregard, Dasomov could no longer ignore the luminous aggravation. It was uncanny how, no matter how many times he moved the darn thing, it was never perfect. Every evening, his eyes would adjust and he would feel inclined to move it again, but he usually didn't. Tonight was too much, he thought, though in truth, it was his extreme concentration that amplified the effects of even the tiniest source of irritation. Dasomov relocated the lamp a few inches without so much as taking a second away from his gaze at his monitor. He punched away into chat.

Doslad: "Noro301 is online in alpha Notre Borealis."

He waited.

Zontna: "I'm getting unusual readings on our network."

Doslad: "It could be the login of Noro301."

Zontna: "Are they using a proxy?"

Jyos: "Thanks for the notice. I'll proceed then."

Doslad: "Could be."

Doslad: "You're welcome. Let us know what you find."

Zontna: "It's from Japan."

Jyos: "Will do."

Doslad: "Interesting."

Zontna: "But that's odd. It's not tied to Noro301."

Doslad: "Say what?"

Zontna: "Noro301 is, in fact, located in Russia."

Zontna: "I can't tell who this other login belongs to."

Dasomov pulled up a terminal, typed in some commands, and began scanning the listings of internet connections to his server running the game. Sure enough, there were both a connection to Japan and unknown connection to Russia. The Russian connection was a commercial proxy company in St Petersburg, but Dasomov figured it was just a cover for a spy in Moscow. Why not use a proxy outside the country? - It would have drawn suspicion, especially since this mysterious follower may have figured Anastasia would mentioned his presence. No sense in hiding location, so he was pretending to live in St Petersburg. _Whatever._

The curious one was this connection to Japan. Again, it may have been a proxy server, but who could it be? Was the mysterious person behind Noro301 operating two accounts? _Not possible_ , he ruled. This person was logged into the World without even gaining permission. Had they found a hole in Dasomov's server security? _What did I do wrong?_ He wondered.

"I wonder if Jyos - or Evan - could solve this mystery," he muttered.

Tapping his fingers to the beat of his befuddlement, he pondered the possibilities. After a minute of musing, he called in the cavalry.

Doslad: " Fusota-ri - Are you familiar with the proxy service companies in Japan?"

He waited a minute. No reply. Fusota-ri had already logged into the world and obviously wasn't checking chat.

Zontna: "I think he logged in already."

Doslad: "Yeah, I figured. Drat."

Zontna: "You could easily look them up."

Doslad: "That'd take too long. We need to operate in real time. I'm going to cut off that connection. Keep an eye out in case it's one of us just using a weird proxy."

Everyone on the team used proxies, but being cheap, most guys used the ones that were either free and located in Russia or the United States or they were in Sweden. Dasomov, Zontna, and Fusota-ri had good proxy services, but the integrity of Kreigbrot's was unknown.

Dasomov opened another terminal and punched in some commands to boot the connection, but before he could hit "Enter", his curiosity held the reins. _I wonder..._ he thought _if this person has a character in the game we could track. Maybe they're connected with the person stalking Anastasia._ Assuming there was a connection, Dasomov realized that letting a second character wander around - albeit monitored - might provide insight into the true intentions of "Evan Yeltsin".

Doslad: "On second thought, I want to see if we can monitor them in the game as well. Maybe they'll tell us about the spy following Tovia."

Zontna: "Ok..?"

Doslad: "I'll leave it to your discretion if you want to boot them for meddling."

Zontna: "Ok. I can't monitor both of them and the server data, so I'll need help."

Doslad: "Don't fret. I'm on it. I'll watch this new connection since it interests me so much."

To be clear, it was impossible for Dasomov to know where this mysterious connection's avatar would show up within any one particular server. As long as they stayed away from the mu and delta servers, Tovia would remain hidden, so there in lied his primary concern. The question remained, what was this new individual truly wanted. Were they in collusion with Evan Yeltsin or did they have something else in mind? Were they even playing the game? Server data suggested they were, but that was all.

 _If only everything wasn't so cryptic!_ the seasoned hacker mentally griped. _We'd be done fixing this game by now. Nevermind trying to figure out who's where inside._

Breathing a heavy sigh, the megabyte master set to work on watchdog duty. With his ghost cam, at least he'd feel as invisible to this newcomer as the newcomer thought he was to them.


	47. 47

## 2018:05:24:22:10 - The World Neuvo: Θ Bursting Geothermal Remnant

Step one to adventuring in the World: Decide on a field and dungeon to explore. Step two: Gather friends. Step three: Meet up at the root town from which you can access the field. The game was relatively straightforward in terms of the kinds of activities you could participate in. It mostly involved fighting monsters in fields and dungeons with friends while searching for rare and special items that would let you repeat the same task with greater ease or allow you to fight more powerful monsters. When the game was managed by CC Corp, every once in a while, there would be a special event and a new field to explore, but the routine was relatively the same. None of the gamers seemed to mind the repetitive nature of the gameplay as long as the upcoming monsters and special items came in new forms with relatively unique attributes. And to complete the picture was the game backstory that infused meaning into the otherwise meaningless digital simulation. Yet the infinite hollowness of the walls and bodies of the World was more than symbolic of the emptiness of the lives of those playing with them. That they would go thus far for amusement seemed a tribute to the keen insights of game developers but was correctly understood as the sheer disconnect from reality created by the confusion in their souls.

Evgeni found it odd he was reflecting on similar thoughts as they played the game. What was so enjoyable about the animations of slashing and spinning and whirling about with weapons that excited this rabble? What was so important that they fought over who to join? Do they simply enjoy fighting in any form?

Evgeni and Pavel alike had noticed the gamers bicker as they decided on "parties", but for Pavel, this was of concern.

Friends in the game could cooperate in their journey by joining "parties" - a group of players that moved and worked together. The game only allowed for up to three individuals in a party, so gamers were advised to pick members wisely so as to have a balanced team. Often this entailed a two melee attackers and a mage of sorts. However, such balance was not a priority for gamers today. Instead, friendships were.

Their unanimous agreement to play in a dungeon was followed shortly thereafter by some teasing and tension, and for subtle, subconscious reasons, the choice of individuals for one's party was festering feelings. _What's the deal?_ thought Pavel. _Are people starting to pick favorites already? We haven't even played the game much yet!_

When the ruckus had been sorted out, Xil-Sta became the default leader of a party composed of q5corbo and Noro301. Kellei and Brofin each joined separate teams. In the end, there were five teams going on the dungeon raid.

Passing through Dun Loireag on the way, Xil-Sta and company arrived in Bursting Geothermal Remnant, an auto-generated field.

The field felt spacious with its grand plains and rolling hills, yet it was lacking in indescribable ways. The ground was covered in a dry orange-brown mossy texture, a perfect match for the dead trees scattered every ten virtual meters or so. Where was the life? _Where are the monsters?_ Evgeni thought.

Just as his thought completed, a gentle tornado of yellow ribbons appeared, followed by the arrival of their first adversary. The creature was resembled a black genie born of a cockroach, having a large V-shaped upper body and muscular arms but with not even a crotch much less lower appendages. In its right hand, it bore a weapon resembling the unholy union of a battle-ax and a mallet constructed of an iron barrel.

"Alright!" yelled q5corbo in excitement. "Time to dooooo BATTLE!"

Equipped with only a basic sword, q5corbo charged headlong towards the creature. He wasn't the least bit concerned with the danger. Such was the joy of virtual immortality.

The creature didn't hesitate to slash at his assailant, but he was made short work by the experienced computer crusader. Evgeni could only imagine the guy behind q5corbo was smashing keys because his avatar went from one attack sequence to the next at unimaginable pace. A slash down left, a twirl and a stab he made without pause. _*Zing!* *Swoosh* *Zing! Zing!* *Fwooooooooom!*_ A few blows later, the monster vanished, and a bounty message appeared.

"Antidote"

"I take it Antidote restores HP?" Noro301 called out.

"No," replied Xil-Sta. "It removes the effects of poison, paralysis, and other status decreases. Very useful."

"Cool," was all Noro301 could utter. He wondered whether he himself was meeting that description. The other gamers didn't seem bothered by his presence yet. Perhaps he could stir the waters with a couple questions if he could get them to admire his efforts. Perhaps all he needed to do was defeat a formidable monster.

He was still contemplating this when Xil-Sta called out, "Don't just stand there and look stupid. Fight! What are you playing this game for?"

Another monster had appeared. It was the same kind as before, but Xil-Sta claimed it had a "buff" - whatever that meant.

Noro301 dived into the action, swinging his sword... the same way over and over again. The monster retaliated by pulverizing his character with more powerful attacks.

Xil-Sta rolled his eyes. "Don't you know anything about MMO combat?"

"Sure," the newbie objected. "It's all hack and slash."

Xil-Sta and q5corbo both laughed.

"You'll get the hang of it," said q5corbo.

"But right now," Xil-Sta pointed out, "you're taking serious damage."

Evgeni checked his healthbar. Low. Very low? It was alittle over 10 percent, but how long did that mean he could last in a fight?

"A little help, maybe?" he pleaded.

Xil-Sta granted him a Healing Elixir, which solved the immediate problem and gave Evgeni the boldness to take on a creature by himself. After q5corbo gave an excellent performance to serve as an example, he and Xil-Sta stepped aside to let Noro301 literally gain experience even if he wouldn't get the XP.

"You're an excellent party leader," praised q5corbo.

The complement hit Xil-Sta like a soft cool breeze on a summer day, and Pavel sensed in himself the joy of child running through a garden of butterflies. "Thanks," he replied with a tone of voice telling of his appreciation. q5corbo's comment had been the first genuine praise he recalled receiving from anyone on the team in a long time, and it was telling of the invisible bonds they had formed in their long time working on the project.

"You're quite impressive for not having played in several months," praised Xil-Sta.

"Wow! Has it been that long?"

Pavel's own words ricocheted back into his mind. _It really has been a third of year, hasn't it?_ he realized. They had been gamers on a mission - to rebuild The World in hopes of a new tomorrow. That reminded him: he forgot to check chat. As he stopped playing for a minute, his character Xil-Sta froze in place. q5corbo kept watching him until he returned.

"I've been so carried away," began Xil-Sta, "that I missed the chat message from our glorious leader."

"What's he say? Time to bring in the fish?" asked q5corbo.

"No. But he's asking us to find out about this guy's mission quickly because another fish is in the water."

There was a pause, and q5corbo froze. Pavel figured the guy behind q5corbo was checking the chat logs, and sure enough, he was back in a minute.

"Got it, and more news," said q5corbo. "Let's show him the dungeon and then take him back to the root town so we can all focus on locating the new fish."

The two of them turned to look for Noro301. He seemed to have disappeared, but as they glanced around, they found him playing a game of tag with the monster.

"At least he's figured out the technique of hit-and-run," remarked Xil-Sta. "But that must mean his sword skills haven't improved an iota."

"Let's go save him..." q5corbo grinned, knowing Xil-Sta's response:

"So we can ditch him later."

At the far end of the field was a large rock jutting out of the ground at about three times the height of an avatar and with a width of two avatar body heights. After Xil-Sta and q5corbo rescued their hapless party member, they lead him to the rock.

"This is the entrance to the dungeon!" Xil-Sta proudly declared.

"What do you need to do," asked Noro301, "to get the door to appear? Say some magic words."

It was true that there was no apparent door before them, but this didn't stop Xil-Sta from rolling his eyes at the naivety of the remark.

"No," said Xil-Sta, "Follow me."

As they walked around to the other side of the rock, Noro301 finally beheld the entrance door to the dungeon and subsequently sensed the full weight of the stupidity he had been suspected of. Diverting attention from himself, he began remarking on its beauty and used that as a segway into discussing - albeit indirectly - the objective of his mission.

"It's a very ornate door with its curls and glyphics, isn't it? No doubt, the passageway should be equally as mesmerizing," he said. "Where does it lead?"

"Dungeons usually contain some kind of reward hidden in treasure chests in the various alleyways of the dungeon. The lowest levels have the best treasures," Xil-Sta explained.

"What kind of treasures?"

"Often weapons or armor."

"Oh..." The tinge of disappointment in Noro301's remark was as evident as if he had plastered it on his clothes in bold letters even though it was meant to be sincere and subtle. At this point in time, however, both Xil-Sta and q5corbo were keenly aware of Noro301's reactions, intent on spotting anything that might hint at his interest.

"What did you hope to find?" asked q5corbo.

"Oh, I don't know," he lied. "Maybe some super monster or something."

"Oh, really?" said Xil-Sta in genuine surprise. "There's almost always one of those, especially in the bigger dungeons. And the treasures are rarer there too."

"Excellent!" said the spy. "Are those monsters super skilled?"

"Definitely," concurred the two hackers.

"Are they super intelligent?"

"They have awesome AIs!" said q5corbo.

"Some cheat," admitted Xil-Sta, hinting at his personal disapproval of some of the game mechanics. "But most are fair."

"What's the best AI of them all?" asked the spy, feeling free enough to ask. He knew they would be thinking about monsters at first, but he could later derail them into discussing the deeper subject.

"Frankly, I'm not sure which monster is the best," said Xil-Sta.

q5corbo frowned and nodded in agreement.

"Take me to the best one that comes to mind anyways," said Noro301.

"It'd kick your butt!" said q5corbo with a smile. Evgeni couldn't tell if he was being playful, honest, or just plain obnoxious, but it didn't matter.

"I don't mind. It'd be worth being the victim of so great a monster if only to see it once."

Xil-Sta smirked. "I know of a monster you'd like to see."


	48. 48

## 2018:05:24:22:15 - The World Neuvo: Δ Hidden Forbidden Radiation: Arche Koeln Waterfall

The sound of crashing waters reverberated in the ears of the three travelers even before the blackness of their screens gave way to the greatest wetland of The World. When they appeared in the zone, they found themselves atop a round stone plateau high above a wide river. It was connected by stone bridges to similar round plateaus and terminated by a broken bridge. Across the gap, the stone bridges and plateaus resumed until the reached a doorway at the entrance to the falls.

The travelers turned and beheld the mighty falls. Like a great dam, it was constructed of three white stone sections - one round one in the center and the other two nearly flat and to either side. The walls of each section were elegantly decorated in the same fashion as the other walls, boasting arched nooks with statuary and topped with dark spires spaced periodically along the highest edge.

"This is it," said Jyos to Taha and Fusota-ri. "The story of the Epitaph nearly ended here when the travelers found themselves trapped by the great wall of water."

"Their journey nearly ended many times, if I recall the lore correctly," commented Fusota-ri.

"Indeed," answered Jyos, suddenly finding himself at a loss for words.

"So what did you want to do here?" asked Taha.

"Pray," he answered.

"What?" asked Taha in surprise. "Are you religious?"

"No."

"Oh..." she answered. Evan could sense slight disappointment in her response. Was she religious? Or was she merely interested in seeing that side of someone's nature? He would have to answer that at another time.

"Some time ago, Pavel - whom you know as 'Xil-Sta' - told me about a website on which several pieces of the Epitaph of Twilight had been posted by someone under the alias of 'Faerkinder'. Once such fragment was a prayer of Saya, the little witch, when she and her companions reached these very falls. Since the game is so intertwined with the Epitaph, I was curious as to whether or not the prayer would provide any clues or unlock any special features. It's only a hunch."

"But a good one," remarked Fusota-ri. "If we want to find out how to gain ultimate control over The World, we need to try everything. This is a start. How does the prayer go?"

Jyos turned to look at the great falls and slowly spoke the epic verses, " _Great streams of water, so high and fair, Arche Koeln! 'Part in two, show us the way. Lead us to Land's End!' Begging, praying, Saya kneeling. Coldly rivers flow._ "

At once, a thunderous creaking honk like the swinging hinge of a door in the winter rumbled across the field and the waters in the middle section of parted in two. At their parting, there appeared a chaos gate, a teleportation device, like the one beside them but with a green sphere in the middle instead of blue. Then one-by-one, stones rose out of the waters far below and hovered together until they formed a makeshift bridge from where the travelers stood to where the chaos gate had appeared.

"That was too easy," noted Fusota-ri.

"Who cares! Let's take it! Let's go!" commanded Jyos.

The three hackers ran up the bridge to the gate. Upon reaching the gate and checking their menus, they were presented with a message giving them the keywords: **Θ Hidden Forbidden Sacrament**.

"Don't these lead to the Great Temple of Caerleon Medb?" asked Jyos.

"I think you're correct," confirmed Fusota-ri. "In that case, we may have nothing to gain from following it or maybe we have much to gain."

"If players have already been there, wouldn't the secret to The World's power already be out?" mused Taha.

Fusota-ri carried on his speculation. "It's possible that, if we follow the full tale of the Epitaph, reading aloud the components we know of as we go, we may trigger the unlocking of The World's power."

"Possible," agreed Jyos.

"Or maybe," the fellow continued, "no one else has read the prayer before, so it may be the only one needed to trigger the unlock. There may be something special in that zone that we can only access by this particular gate."

"Well we won't find out by just standing here," said Taha. "Let's go."

The three of them attempted to access the field linked to keywords Hidden Forbidden Sacrament, but as they did so, an anomaly occurred. All of sudden, their screens were staticky, their pixels went wild and inverted in color, and their avatars became stuck. _*Bzeeeeeee* *Pshshshshshshhhhhp*_

## 2018:05:24:22:29 - The World Neuvo: Secret Passage to the Keel Mountains

When things returned to normal with the screen, Jyos found himself in a bizarre field unlike anything he had ever seen. He was inside of an icy cavern, surrounded by stalactites and stalagmites of glittering white, and a mere stone's throw from the exit. Fusota-ri and Taha appeared beside him in short notice.

"Where are we?" asked Taha.

"Good question," said Jyos. "Why don't we check the entrance over there and catch our bearings?"

Jyos and Taha walked towards the exit, but Fusota-ri meandered around.

"This area is fascinating," he called out, his voice fading with the growing distance between them. "There may be something of interest here."

At the entrance to the cave, light streamed inside in elaborate rays, tickling the fancy of the explorers. But no such amusement could keep their eyes from what lie visible from the entry. The pathway just outside was walled in on both sides by mountain, indicating the cave entrance was nestled in a deep ravine. Yet the path appeared unimpeded for a great distance as a quickly and briefly ascended and then disappeared on its rapid descent down - what Evan realized was - a mountainside upon which the cave was hidden. The mountainside was green and grassy, providing a smooth transition into the serene scene that filled their eyes. For off in the distance were the Keel Mountains.

"Have you ever seen part of the game this beautiful?" asked Taha.

"Never," Jyos admitted.

The two of them were mesmerized for a dozen minutes and may have remained that way for longer had Fusota-ri not called their attention.

"Hey you two! Look what I found!"

The exuberant explorer rushed up to his companions and open the trading screen. The other two examined the item with the perplexity of puppies given Scotch tape to play with.

"What is it?" they asked simultaneously.

"I... don't know," admitted the delighted discoverer. "But it looks awesome. It's like some kind of key, maybe."

Jyos read the item's label again and again to let its meaning sink in until some tidbit of fathomable information might trickle out of this dry radish: "Neglected Pension".

"I don't get it," Taha concluded.

She and Fusota-ri then drifted into a conversation of trading conjectures that became a drone to Evan as he pondered the piece to the puzzle. _Did it have something to do with going to the Keel Mountains? Or was it just a random, lucky item? What does it mean by being labeled 'pension'? Pension is compensation. But it's compensation for after you're done working. So it's compensation ultimately ignored?_ Nothing seemed to make sense.

But the puzzle had to wait, for at that moment, the three gamers found themselves caught up in another fizzy storm of flashy pixel colors and Rorschach shapes. And again, The World went black.


	49. 49

## 2018:05:24:22:43 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment, Saratov, Russia

Dasomov yawned the kind that bears do when hibernation has begun, but no matter how great the temptation, he couldn't rest until the job was done. How long was it going to take? Like everyone else, he had things to do tomorrow. There had been many long evenings and sleepless nights working on the game until the wee hours of the morning, but he couldn't keep doing that. Forming his thumb and pointer finger in a V, he pushed up his glasses and rubbed his eyes for a moment. Staring at the monitor drained life out of his eyes with every second. _I need to look away for a moment or I'm going to burn my retinas_ , he thought. Turning around to the farthest angle away from the screen, he faced his pilling sofa with a beer can tipped over in the middle.

"Whoops! Forgot to eat something."

He speed-walked to the fridge and pulled out a beer can. Raising it to his eyes and examining the label, he found himself contemplating on the absence of delight in its flavors. It was cheap beer in every respect, not merely inexpensive, but Dasomov never bothered experimenting with new foods. He would tell himself such picky-ness stole time from more important things and "you get what you pay for", but the truth he knew all too well: This was Russia, and he didn't live in the Kremlin. It's true he could have hopped a few blocks and grabbed a better, richer beer made by unlicensed professionals or a delectable and potentially deadly SCOBI from a sailor-turned-chef he knew, but there wasn't time.

Barrel-rolling the can in his fingers, he sighed and began reflecting on his situation. _I don't spend my money on good food or invest in profitable ventures like I was taught, do I?_ "I deserve this, I guess," he said aloud. He turned to look at his computer and sighed again. _I spend all my time on this game. Is my life really just this? A beer can and a computer? A crummy couch and an old refrigerator?_ He turned even more to glance at a picture on a wall of a Korean woman. His arm with the can fell to his side, the edges of his lips dipped gently downward to a degree barely measurable but clearly evident, and in his eyes there appeared a faraway look as though he were watching a boat float to heaven and he had missed it again. "How pathetic I am."

He shook his head, opened the beer, and took a big swig. This was no time for reflection, he told himself; he had a job to do, and time was ticking. Slipping back into his chair, he checked chat. Nothing yet on Noro301 nor the mysterious other gamer.

Doslad: "I double-checked the player count just to make sure the mysterious connection wasn't one of us. Sure enough, we're one over. No sign of him in the game yet, and I've wandered a number of existing root towns."

Zontna: "They could be anywhere."

Doslad: "No reports from anyone thus far, I see."

Zontna: "It's getting late, and sadly, I need to work tomorrow, so I'd like to wrap this up soon."

Kriegbrot: "Tomorrow you work? Now is early."

Doslad: "I've told Xil-Sta to bring in Noro301, but he hasn't responded."

Zontna: "He's still on delta server, right?"

Doslad: "I believe so."

Xil-Sta: "Sorry, I forgot to respond. I saw your message. We're reeling him in."

Doslad: "Find out what he wanted?"

Xil-Sta: "No, nothing unusual."

Doslad: "Did he ask about anything?"

Xil-Sta: "About where to find the most interesting stuff in the game."

Doslad: "What interesting stuff? Treasures? Tokens? Magic?"

Xil-Sta: "Monsters, actually. He wanted to fight the coolest monsters, particularly the ones with the best AI."

 _Whaaaaat?_ For a moment, Dasomov was confused. _Could he really be just interested in gaming? Is there something special about monsters that he's interested in? Wait a second..._

Doslad: "He's probably just trying to throw us off."

Xil-Sta: "Why? Couldn't he be just a fanatic gamer?"

Dasomov wasn't sure how to respond. It was true that the stalker seemed like an average gamer to the others, albeit he was awfully creepy. But Dasomov trusted his niece, and it was certain this mysterious individual behind Noro301 had either the power to stop a doctor from releasing a patient or was faking credentials or both. There was one sure way of finding out.

Doslad: " Zontna: Know anyone in the phone industry who needs a bonus outside his paycheck this month?"

Zontna: "No clue."

Doslad: "Oh, wait. I guess I'd know better than you."

Doslad: "My fault for asking."

Dasomov stood up and rushed over to his cell phone. The familiar artificial ring periodically buzzed his eardrums for a tense ten seconds. _Come on! Pick up already!_

"Dazzy!"

Dasomov smiled. He hated being called that, but at this particular moment, that greeting was anticipated with rare delight.

"Thanks for answering my call. I wasn't sure I could reach you this late at night."

"No problem. I'm awake for another hour usually. What's up?"

"Have a quiet place to listen in?"

"Sure, sure! Give me a minute."

The other man's voice went silent, but Dasomov could hear the muddled sound of footsteps on the other end.

"I'm back," said the man, his voice crackling a tad bit as he jiggled his phone and the connection was weakened. "Can you still hear me."

"Yes."

"Good. Ok, whatcha need? More work? 'Cause I got it for ya."

"That'd be great, but I have a favor to ask of you first. I'll ask about the work after I finish something up on my plate at the time."

"Special favor?"

"Special."

"Lay it on me."

"It's nice to know we can have a private conversation," said Dasomov, insinuating the opposite. He knew the other man would catch his drift.

"Tell me about it," confirmed the man in subtle sarcasm disguised as pleasant optimist. Speaking as they often did, it was possible for one to give the other a white-coated-frosting cake at a public party and hint to each other how it was mud - and not a chocolate sponge - inside without so much as tipping off the most talented of eavesdroppers. Their mutual understanding was a legendary talent, but Dasomov considered it a simple necessity in Russia.

"It's kind of blessing we share with the dogs. Except they think we can't understand them."

"Reminds me, I don't think I've ever asked you what kind of dogs you like. Let me know, and I'll give you one."

"Thanks, I'd appreciate it. I usually like the ones I see in the pet store around the Saratov hospital. I nice one caught my eye a week and a half ago. It was an odd dog, not one you'd usually hear barking in that part of town. I guess that's what made it so interesting."

"Sounds like your type. I'll fetch him for ya."

"Thanks, I appreciate it."

"Want me to look tomorrow?"

"Actually, you could probably check him out tonight. The internet has everything you need to find the dog you want."

There was a chuckle. "Indeed! Ok, I'll have a look or I'll ask a buddy of mine. What's this dog look like? Give me a good description."

Dasomov had a pause and dig into his memory. Exactly what _did_ he know about the stalker? Anastasia hadn't given him a physical description - not that that would help. There was no clue about his actual voice or what he said. Dasomov had to take a guess and be a little more revealing than he wanted, but maybe, just maybe, he thought, the KGB listening in on his conversation wouldn't care about his phone call much less decipher the code of his conversation.

Dasomov took a deep breath. "Uuuummmm... He's a kind of German Shepherd in personality. He'd scare your doctor and keep him _and_ his patients bottled up in a room all day if you ever set him loose."

"My doctor's a pretty tough guy," replied the other man, going along with the gag. "This must be some serious dog. You sure you want him at your apartment?"

"If I tame him, my little niece will be very impressed."

"Ah. Looking to please the little tykes, eh? What's your niece's name?"

"Anastasia."

"Got it. Cool, well I'll check out this beast and let you know if I find him. Give my regards to your niece."

"Thanks! Will do!"

The two men spat out some obligatory parting words and hung up. _*click*_

"Uuuugh... Well, I guess I don't mind him calling me 'Dazzy' tonight, for one night only," the serious software hacker admitted. _Once in a while, I'll embrace that child within._ Dasomov turned to look at his computer and suddenly recognized the magnificent irony in his own thought. A brief chuckle burped from his nostrils, and he shook his head with a smile. "Silly me. ... Whatever."


	50. 50

## 2018:05:24:22:44 - The World Neuvo: Unknown

The blue rings rose around the avatars of Jyos, Taha, and Fusota-ri as the entered a unfamiliar secret field. The floor was textured in smooth grey stones forming an abstract, meaningless mosaic. The sky was cloudy, and on all sides, the three travelers were walled in by steep cliffs covered in dense thicket and dead trees. Before them about twenty paces was a small monument composed of three tiers and a large face inset below an arch.

"Where are we?" asked Taha.

The gamers looked around.

"I don't know. This place is weird," commented Jyos.

"I've never seen this place before," said Fusota-ri. "I'm aware that there are many zones in The World that are undiscovered, and this seems to be one of the more bizarre ones. Or perhaps it's just lazy on the part of the designers."

"It's creepy in my opinion," contended Taha.

"To each their own," retorted the elder.

"Children!" called out a sourceless, feminine voice with the tone of a bass and a timber of a owl.

All three of them became tense.

"Did you hear that?" asked Taha.

"I did!" "Same here!" Confirmed the boys.

The voice came again. "I have seen you play. Your are the inquisitive explorers, the first I have ever seen. I am delighted to meet you."

"Who's there?!" yelled Jyos.

"Will you hear my request?" the voice continued.

The gamers froze in silence, their nerves tense like rubberbands stretched and wound around the axle of a pull-and-release toy car.

"Will you hear my request?" the voice repeated.

Fusota-ri was the first to ease his nerves by remembering it was just a game. He finally broke the silence. "Sure. What do you want?"

"I have long sought to find shadowed ones, but none could be found. I have become desperate. But you three are shadowed ones, and I need your help."

"What for?" Feeling relaxed, Fusota-ri became the default conversationalist with the disembodied voice.

"I need your experiences to teach my child. Without them, I cannot complete my mission, my purpose in The World."

"And what is your purpose?"

"Step into the room, and you shall see."

"What room?" asked Fusota-ri, expressing his condescension as he would to a friend trying to ask him to ride an invisible bike.

"Step forward, and you shall be in it."

"Some kind of a metaphor, maybe?" noted Jyos.

Fusota-ri shrugged.

The three gamers walked in the direction of the monument. As they neared, it became evident that there was text on its main face.

"Hey, look! There's an inscription on the monument!" exclaimed Taha in a soft, pleasant voice as if realizing peanut butter really did taste good with onion. Being amused by trivial facts was purely human and kind of cute, Evan noted.

Taha stepped closer to the monument to read, but as she did so, she suddenly vanished through an invisible wall.

"Where'd she go?!" yelled Jyos.

The guys rushed to the point on the monument where Taha had disappeared. In a moment's notice, they too passed through the border and into its secret.

## 2018:05:24:23:01 - The World Neuvo: The Cradle Chamber

Jyos and Fusota-ri materialized beside Taha in a vast, open field covered in rich, green grass. Trees in their spring clothes dotted the landscape. Overhead, a sparsely clouded purple sky boasted tiny sparkling decorations and spread its cloak towards the edges of the world. As it dipped to the ground, it become a bright day blue pinned to the ground by lonely-peaked mountains in the distance. But the most interesting feature was a full-size bed and frame with its legs firmly on the ground. And hovering above it in lying position was a silver-haired girl clothed in a white linen dress rippling with the wind.

The mysterious feminine voice called out from overhead like a choir of angels at each corner of the sky: "I am to form and release into The World its guiding light, its key of the twilight, Aura."

 _Aura?! I know that name!_ thought Jyos. He looked at Taha with the delight of a kid in a toystore. "Aura was the ultimate AI in The World! I never got to see her, but I heard a lot about her. She's supposedly amazing!"

"Really?!" said Taha, sharing his enthusiasm.

"And this isn't her... Or at least, it's not the _same_ her," Fusota-ri pointed out. "We're in a separate game system, a new version of The World. Whatever may be true about Aura in the old game won't be applicable here."

Jyos nodded in agreement. Then a certain troubling thought crossed his mind. "Wait a minute," he began. "If this is Aura, then the voice..."

Fusota-ri looked up at the sky. "Who are you?" he called out.

The voice replied, "I am called Morganna."

Fear tingled down Evan's back. Legend had it that Morganna Mode Gone had wreaked havoc in The World on the Japanese servers. Could she be trusted in this world? What was she doing raising Aura? Wasn't that a bad sign already? Should they steal Aura from her? She might bring them back the same way she brought them here. Evan continued to run through his options.

Meanwhile, Fusota-ri acted either oblivious of her past offenses or considered them a non-factor. He decided to carry on the conversation. "And how can we help?"

The voice responded. "I need a shadowed one to remain here, one whose dreams will serve as the words to teach Aura how to be free."

"Not to be rude," said Jyos to his Japanese companion, "but don't you recall the Morganna of old?"

"I do, but that's irrelevant," replied the other sleuth, turning to look at Jyos.

"What? No it isn't!" Jyos objected. "This Morganna is based on the same..." Evan caught himself as he spoke. The number 3.95 returned to mind. Just how different _was_ this version of the game?

"Again," Fusota-ri replied. "You're flying apples and balloons," he said, messing up a colloquialism. "You can't judge this world by the previous one. What I gather is that Morganna just needs memories."

"And you feel comfortable taking the risk?"

"Perhaps... After all, this may be the key to ultimate power in the world. Think about it. Whoever gives Aura her memories will shape her ideas about what to do in this world."

The words he spoke could not have been more true had they been carved from legendary antiquity in the core of The World. At the same time, there was an indescribable gravity to his conjecture. Should his words be true, they had completed their search and won the race as a group but their discovery might breed infighting and competition over the role of Aura's chief influencer. However, should his conjecture be false, all three of them could find themselves in comatose will no hope of sharing their new knowledge with any of the other hackers.

"You're too valuable to the team," Jyos pointed out. "Are you really going to offer yourself or do you want me or Taha to try?"

"It sounds like you're too nervous," Fusota-ri remarked.

"None of us have to offer ourselves," input Taha.

The boys turned to look at her.

"We already have someone who is more than suitable for this role considering his condition," she continued. "Mikmik."

"Excellent idea!" said Jyos. "He was always a cheerful individual, which is why he was a decorator. Even if his body in real life is gone and decayed, I'm sure he'd love a valuable role and a place in this world."

Fusota-ri was quick to draw attention to the trouble with that plan: "Mikmik is still captive to Mobashem."

"True," admitted Jyos. "But maybe we can make a deal."

Fusota-ri and Taha looked at him with confused looks.

Looking up at the sky, Jyos called out, "We can help you, but first, we need you to help us."

The voice returned. "What is your need?"

"Are you able to free a victim from the control of another monster?"

"My power is great, but even I have weaknesses. What monster is it?"

"Mobashem."

"That monster is not familiar to me. Its name is not in lore of old."

 _So it is true!_ thought Evan. _Mobashem is an addition to the game._ "Mobashem is a large mantis in a coffin in Dun Loireag."

"Many a war has been fought, yet only the Cursed Wave terrorized the hearts of those who dwelt there. This monster, from where did it come? What is the place of its birth?"

"No one knows."

"Ah, a familiar pattern. Perhaps it is from their nest. For indeed..." Then the voice rumbled in the haunting tone of one telling ghost stories, "Unknown where the Cursed Wave was born… After the stars doth cross the heavens, The sky in the East doth darken and air doth fill with mourning. From the chosen land beyond the forest, a sign of the wave comes." When the voice finished its tale, its voice returned to what it had been formerly. "This creature may have come from the nest of the Cursed wave."

There appeared a pair of messages to each of the gamers: " ΘTidal Elimination Scorn" and "Θ Tidal Curses Homeland".

"The first of these routes," said the voice, "takes you to the entrance of hell itself. The second, accessible from the first, takes you to a field labeled the Cursed Wave's Nest. I am unfamiliar with these fields nor is there mention of them in ancient lore."

"Where do you find the ancient lore?" asked Jyos.

"Ancient lore is found written in the Akashic Record, embedded in the grasses of the Field of Eternal Mourning, and carved upon the Memorial of Twilight that resides within that plain."

There appeared another message to the gamers: "Θ Cursed Traveler's End".

"This," the voice instructed, "is the entrance code. From there, you must enter Fleeing Spirit's Turmoil before you can reach the stone."

A final message appeared to the gamers: "Θ Cursed Fearful Pain".

"Excellent!" "Awesome!" "Woohoo!" said the gamers three.

The voice continued. "I will seek this Mikmik of whom you speak. Will they perform the favor for me if I rescue them?"

"Definitely!" said Jyos confidently.

A funnel of blue rings rose around the players, and a moment later, they were gone.


	51. 51

## 2018:05:24:23:15 - The World Neuvo: Θ Dun Loireag

A gentle wind could be heard sweeping around the mountainous peaks as Noro301 stared out at the cloudy abyss before him.

"This looks like a town," he said, turning to Xil-Sta who was standing to his left. "Is there a dungeon entrance here?"

"No," confessed Xil-Sta. "But there is the greatest monster you'll ever see."

"How exciting! Is it the kind that learns how you attack and responds intelligently to your speech?"

q5corbo, standing behind Noro301, giggled.

"Even better," said Xil-Sta. He checked around to ensure no one else but the three of them were there. Then he opened his hacky admin panel and the frightful festivities began.

The clouds over the edge became thick and the sky was tinged in red. There arose from the depths a gigantic black coffin with an inscription in gold: CONDEMNATION. Noro301 began taking steps backward as the coffin opened up.

"What are you afraid of?" teased Xil-Sta. "It's only a little one?"

"You have trespassed!" declared Mobashem as it rose out of its sarcophagus. "You are the guilty party! All of you!"

There appeared behind the gamers the captive Mikmik, accompanied by the old avatars of Doslad and Jyos, all grey and in chains as Mikmik was. Walking in hobbled fashion, they moved towards Noro301 and scared him nearer to Mobashem.

"How do you fight these monsters?" he asked, looking at the zombies.

"You don't," said Xil-Sta in a nonchalant manner.

Noro301 turned to look at him and was shocked to see Xil-Sta turning grey.

"WHAT?! Can't you fight it?!"

The two hackers just laughed.

"You wanted to see the best," said Xil-Sta.

q5corbo added, "And THIS is IT!"

Noro301 looked at himself at saw his skin turn grey. What could he do? He looked up at the monster, and fear filled his eyes. Second by second, tick by tick, the monster was yanking him into its grasp.

## 2018:05:24:23:25 - Real Life: 23rd Division Headquarters, Moscow, Russia

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Evgeni screamed at the top of his lungs until his wind was gone. Sucking in another bellyful of air, he shrieked, "HAAAAAAAAAAAHAHH!"

Every part of his head was in agonizing pain. His ear drums rattled off the Richter scale. His brains were mush, moldy potatoes being crushed by an anvil and squeezed by a thousand rubber bands. His eyes bulged from his sockets that would have been roadkill frog proud. With swaths of hair held fast in between his fingers, he teetered back and forth in his seat like an palm in a hurricane.

 _*thump thump thump!*_ The rapid knocking of his comrades on his office door showed their concern and simultaneously their respect for his command not to be disturbed. On such an occasion, they could at least honor the latter partially by not intruding upon him. As their knocking yielded no welcome, it gradually diminished, as did the screams.

When all was silent, all were gone. What remained on the desk in the darkness of the room was a keyboard, a game controller, and a glowing monitor, its light blanketing a black-suited body wearing a headset and lying motionless over the keyboard.


	52. 52

## 2018:05:24:23:30 - The World Neuvo: Θ Bursting Gluttonous Aqua Field

Nearly entirely water with a speckling of small islands, the field of Bursting Gluttonous Aqua Field was a fisherman's paradise. From the tiniest of minnows to the largest of whales that could be hunted, the realm had everything the game graphics would allow. Nestled into the sands of the few islands were the brigs of destroyed ships, appearing to be composed of wood but also made from transparent material that made it possible to look directly into the ocean below its surface and view the aquatic creatures. Being partially randomly-generated, the overall field was of simple construction, but this was hardly a deterrence in light of the appeal of its main attractions.

Several of the gamers had come to harvest a few of the fish, and, having just begun the game, had no fishing poles. As a substitute, they opened their administrative panels and began manipulating The World to their liking and until they might complete their objectives.

Kellei in particular was adamant about using administrative powers and had come to the zone with his party on their way to a dungeon. Even though their mission was to seek the proper means of controlling The World, Kellei's team thought it would be good in many ways just to relax and enjoy the game for a time. As they did, time slipped away from them.

But just as they were in the thick of things, an unfamiliar avatar approached Kellei as he was browsing the features on his admin panel. The avatar had spiky green hair and a pointed chin and nose, unmistakably a male of the Long Arm class.

"Very interesting," he said.

Kellei eyed him with immediate suspicion. "Who are you?"

"You don't recognize me?"

"Not at all."

"I suppose not. But I recognize you."

Kellei stared at the visitor in silence for a moment, still eying him with pinched, pointed eyebrows and an unrelenting frown. "How's that?"

"I," answered the avatar, "am a true administrator. And you are a cheater and no doubt the thief!"

"I'm not a cheater. This game isn't even official," retorted Kellei.

"That it is not official is most certain... because you and your friends stole it!" accused the newcomer.

"I'm just a beta-tester!"

"Oh? A beta-tester with admin powers? I have seen you in action, Kellei."

Kellei looked at the user ID displayed for the visitor: Knut.

"Ok nut - what have I done?"

"It's pronounced 'kunoot'. And you have done much evil. Give up this game. Tell me who helped you steal the game. If you do, I won't put you into comatose."

"Are you threatening me?" Kellei said in disbelief. That was the tipping point. He burst out laughing. "HAHAHAHAHA!"

Kellei's party members turned to see what he was laughing about.

"Ok," began Knut, "I must put you into comatose because you did not heed my instructions."

"Bring it on, buddy!" taunted Kellei, believing this was all now one big joke.

Knut floated into the air and traveled backwards until he was hovering over a separate island.

A quarter of a minute passed and Kellei began hearing a deep rumbling.

"What's that?" his companions asked.

Kellei turned to the ocean and saw the waves rise and crash with frantic repetition. A quarter minute later, and the waves had become violent and the sea bellowed out a stupendous groan as if a battleship had sunk and cracked in its depths. What followed caused the full egg of Kellei's eyes to be exposed.

"It's..." he stuttered. In unison with his comrades, he shouted, "Mobashem's coffin!"

A giant black coffin rose from the depths, bearing the foreboding words in gold:

"CONDEMNATION".

"How did it get here?" "Where did it come from?" "How did that guy make it appear?" "Kellei, who is that guy?" A hundred thoughts and fears spat out of the mouths of Kellei and his companies, but the final thought on Kellei's mind before the inevitable march of his avatar to doom was that he would fulfill one of his leader's requests for this mission: _Doslad is definitely going to want to hear about this!_


	53. 53

## 2018:05:25:00:00 - Real Life: Dasomov's Apartment, Saratov, Russia

Guessing that everyone was enjoying the game, Dasomov had gradually become accustomed to the quasi-radio silence in the chatroom this evening. It therefore felt like a sonic boom to Dasomov when the chatroom was suddenly bursting with dialogue. Five minutes after the shockwave, Dasomov was still trying to get a grip on the chaos so they could have a productive conversation.

Doslad: "HOLD ON EVERYONE, HOLD ON! I CAN ONLY TALK TO YOU ONE AT A TIME!"

Kellei: "Me first!"

Jyos: "This is really exciting news!"

Xil-Sta: "Checkmate on our stalking friend!"

Fusota-ri: "We found a key to power!"

Zontna: "Not everyone at once!"

Kellei: "We ran into an admin from the former game!"

A number of others pitched in.

Doslad: "I SAID HOLD ON!"

Doslad: "Everyone, STOP TALKING!"

Herding cats would have been easier, but they didn't speak Russian, and there was something intrinsically lazy - or perhaps more akin to programmers - and therefore more appealing to Dasomov about typing his commands and having them obeyed to the letter. When the stream of comments finally died down, Dasomov had his choice of news provider.

Doslad: "Xil-Sta, report."

Xil-Sta: "Mission accomplished! The ship has been sunk."

Doslad: "Good."

Xil-Sta: "I lost my avatar, though, and q5corbo lost his."

Doslad: "I see."

Xil-Sta: "So whenever we get them back, it'll be when we get Mikmik back as well."

Doslad: "Yes."

Doslad: "Jyos?"

Jyos: "We found Aura."

Dasomov stared at his screen in silence for a roadtrip minute. _Aura? The legendary AI? What's she doing in this world? Oh, hm, I guess she is technically part of The World._

q5corbo: "The super AI? WAY COOL!"

A number of others congratulated Jyos, Fusota-ri, and Tovia (Taha) on their discovery, though the last of them wasn't there to receive it.

Dasomov leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, looked at the wall above his monitor - his favorite visual target when he began contemplating deeply. The news of Aura put a new spin on their situation. Could she help them bring back Mikmik? Could she give them the secrets of The World? Would she even cooperate? What if she become a pest, a troublemaker, or worse - a chaotic freak who would force their game to shut down?

Jyos: " Doslad - There's more. Do you want to hear it yet?"

Doslad: "Give me a second."

The information delivery bees buzzed through Dasomov's brain, creating an ruckus that could not be silenced nor meaning found in its business. Dasomov shook his head. It was getting late; he was tired and knew it. And that last beer wasn't making anything clearer, even with the leftover slaw he ate to balance things out in his stomach.

Doslad: " Jyos - I know you're excited about the info you want to give me, but I need to ask your opinion on a certain mystery."

Jyos: "I don't know if I'm as good at solving mysteries as I thought I was."

Doslad: "What's the matter? Your confidence shaken somehow?"

Jyos: "Yeah..."

Doslad: "Don't worry about it. Just give me an opinion, and let me do the deciding as to whether on not it's good. You've already have plenty of good ideas before; that's why I've asked you. You're a good detective. Take that to heart."

The rising of Evan's spirit at Dasomov's words rivaled a rocket. Even Dasomov was surprised at his words of praise.

Jyos: "Thanks so much."

Doslad: "You're welcome."

Jyos: "What did you need solved?"

Doslad: "Xil-Sta said the stalker, whom we knew was or should have been Noro301, was interested in the usual things gamers are interested in."

Jyos: "So he's a game addict. But he's good at faking his identity because he got access to Tovia at the hospital."

Doslad: "Correct."

Jyos: "Wait, if he's good at faking his identity, then shouldn't we expect he's good at lying about his interests?"

Doslad: "True. I don't know. I'm tired and can't think straight because me head hurts."

Jyos: "Are there any other details?"

Xil-Sta: "Let me take over the Q&A."

Doslad: "Go ahead."

Xil-Sta: "He was really interested in monsters, particularly the ones that were the smartest, like those that learned your fighting moves and could talk back to you."

There was a pause.

Fusota-ri: "It's very simple, and Jyos and I concur. He wants Aura."

Fusota-ri's comment resounded like a gong in Carnegie Hall. At once, rumors began to circulate with the sticking power of magical molasses held firmly in their originator's minds until each spell of release came from Fusota-ri's text.

Fusota-ri: "In Japan, The World was extremely popular, and the internet came to depend on it. Aura become intricately connected with the internet, and when she disappeared recently, the internet crashed. If one gains control of Aura, and this game becomes very popular in your country, then one could control the entire internet through her. Theoretically."

Fusota-ri: "Moreover, we found her in child form. She is being cared for by Morganna. Morganna appears to be good in our game. And powerful."

Jyos: "I'm skeptical as to whether or not she is good, but she didn't do anything bad to us. Her concern is in finding someone whose memories she can use to teach Aura."

Jyos: "So we offered Mikmik."

Doslad: "I wish you would have consulted me first. I'd rather not make deals we can't keep. I'm especially not fond of enslaving anyone on our team to this maddening system, as I've already made clear."

Jyos: "Indeed you have. But don't worry. We told her she has to save him first, and then he'll only be needed up until Aura is finished. Which, I'm not sure how long that would take, but it sounds like there's an ending point at least."

Doslad: "Ok. Good."

Doslad: "Kellei, what's up?"

Jyos: "There's more."

Doslad: " Jyos - Really? o_O We'll wait on that."

Kellei: "My party and I ran into that mysterious user."

Xil-Sta: "Did Doslad just use an emoticon?"

q5corbo: "I o_O that too!"

Doslad: "You did? Who is it?"

Kellei: "It's an admin from CC Corp."

Doslad: "What?"

Jyos: "This game is becoming awfully popular around the world for not being published."

Brofin: "Word just in: My party and I were ambushed by some crazy green-haired guy."

Kellei: "You too?"

Brofin: "And get this:"

Doslad: "Brofin, we're in the middle of a sane dialogue."

Brofin: "He called in Mobashem!"

Xil-Sta: "Whoa! There really is a guy from CC Corp here!"

Kellei: " Brofin - You stole my thunder."

Doslad: " Brofin - I was implying you needed to wait, but that is interesting news."

Brofin: "Wait! You got ambushed too, Kellei?"

Kellei: "Not quite, although the appearance of Mobashem took us all by surprise. I didn't know it could leave Dun Loireag."

Doslad: "Thanks for the info, Kellei."

Doslad: " Zontna - Are you still online?"

Zontna: "Yeah, hanging in there."

Doslad: "Good. Block the CC Corp guy's IP address after I boot him."

Zontna: "Will do."

Doslad: "My mistake for letting him stick around."

Jyos: "At least we learned more about Mobashem."

Dasomov briefly minimized the chat window and pulled up his terminal with the appropriate commands awaiting his confirmation. He gave that confirmation by a light smack on the Enter key matching the strike speed of a garden spider. Then he resumed presiding over the chat room chaos.

Doslad: " Jyos - What else did you have?"

Jyos: "We spoke with Morganna about Mobashem, and she told us it wasn't in the ancient lore of The World."

Doslad: "Is that referring to game story or something?"

Jyos: "She said it referred to information found in three places: the Akashic Records, the Field of Mourning, and the Memorial of Twilight."

Fusota-ri: "Field of Eternal Mourning, to be correct."

Jyos: "Yes."

Doslad: "Interesting."

Doslad: "What is this Memorial of Twilight?"

Jyos: "I don't know, but she gave us keywords to access a number of fields, including the one containing the Memorial."

q5corbo: "Sounds like you'll find the story of The World when you get there."

Xil-Sta: "Sounds like I'm out of a job."

Jyos: "Speaking of which, Xil-Sta, I'd like to talk about that game story job."

Xil-Sta: "Huh?"

Doslad: "Not now, Jyos."

Doslad: "Jyos: Go tell Taha that it's safe for her to get back on chat."

Jyos: "Ok."

Doslad: "And tomorrow, figure out where those keywords actually lead. We may need them to find the real truth about this game."

Jyos: "Aye aye, captain!"

Doslad: "Until then, we're done for tonight."

With that, Dasomov was content to allow the ensuing commentary flood the chat box. He closed the chat window, shut of his monitor, and breathed a sigh of exhaustion. Tomorrow would be an especially busy day, he predicted. Picking up his cell phone and checking the clock made him feel even more weary: It was tomorrow, about 1:25 in the morning.


	54. Ending Summary

To my dear readers,

I started this project over a year and a half ago and cranked away at it recently to finish it up. I was aiming for 60 chapters, but I didn't quite get there before my deadline and now I have many other things to do. However, I don't want to leave you hanging, so I'll tell you now how the story ends, and it's a good, satisfying ending, so sit back and enjoy.

The Ending of .hack/Fork: Genesis

Jyos, Fusota-ri, and Taha go to Θ Cursed Traveler's End, which is a very haunting zone. It contains no monsters, but in it they feel like they are hallucinating and see images of Saya the Witch with a fearful look on her face. Eventually, they see through her eyes and see how she realized the impending doom of the Cursed Wave and it wiping out the armies of Dark and Light. She also sees her companions eliminated there.

The three of them move on from there to the Field of Eternal Mourning. There, Saya had fled from the battle zone. Notably Lara, Harald Hoerwick's niece, had acted out the character of Saya the Witch. The Twilight Dragon in that story was actually a program that monitored the Light and Dark, and upon finding their arguing unending, would delete them and start the world anew every time using the program The Cursed Wave. Saya (or rather, Lara) told it that asking the world to be perfect was a selfish wish and that people can learn only if they have the memories to learn, so eliminating them and restarting fresh would only lead to the same problems. The Twilight Dragon conceded and stopped wiping out the World. However, in .hack/Fork, the story has been modified to follow the Lore. Turns out, the lady Harald Hoerwick loved is actually alive and leading MAMA, the organization behind .hack. Crafty as she is, she took his game after his disappearance and has been completing HER telling of the Epitaph, which includes the death of Saya.

The three hackers travel to the Field of Eternal Mourning where they discover unusual data records hidden in the field. The data doesn't make any sense at first since it not only hints at the ending of the sprites in the Epitaph but of all creatures after the Epitaph (i.e. when the players themselves play the game since the Epitaph is the backstory of The World).

The three of them reach the Monument of Twilight, also known as the Epitaph Stone. It's absolutely gigantic and contains the most complete version of the story ever known, though some parts are still blotted out from the artificially-created appearance of age and wear. They begin to read it, but as they do, its words highlight and start to read themselves. Then, as they proceed, the Cursed Wave appears and starts to attack them.

Meanwhile, Dasomov has just booted the stranger from Japan. As it turns out, this stranger was none other than a member of CC Corp assigned to investigate the strange server signals being received from Russia. (Note, many online games have certain IP addresses or web addresses coded into them that point back to the servers owned by the company who made the game. That way, they can relay info back to the company.) Despite the IP ban, the CC Corp member returns and is able to control Mobashem directly. The other hackers go into hiding and scatter throughout The World to evade capture.

Morganna, who is actually a good AI in this version of the game (since she hasn't lost her purpose), goes in search of Mikmik. She finds a secret zone, but instead of just Mikmik, she discovers a host of other avatars (including those lost early in the story by the hackers). She decides to set them all free. Mikmik, finally free, is very grateful. However, with his real life consciousness restored, he hears voices that sound like those of doctors talking about his condition. He feels the urge to leave to tell them to keep him alive, but Morganna is sad to see him go. She desperately wants him to stay. He promises to return soon, but his doctors and family are so excited to have him back, they don't want him to play the game again.

In KGB headquarters, Evgeni has been put into comatose, and agent Iskra takes over his mission. She goes to visit Dasomov under the alias "Elena" since she used that name to betray him several years ago. She is very attractive and has excellent charms. However, Dasomov's heart is so hardened against her that he shuts her out, and the story starts taking a turn for the better.

Mobashem detects it has been robbed of its prisoners, and Mobashem and Morganna have an epic duel of power. Morganna tries to invoke the Cursed Wave but discovers she is unable to because the Cursed Wave is being controlled by one more powerful than her: the Monument of Twilight / Epitaph Stone.

Jyos, Taha, and Fusota-ri avatars are obliterated (literally) by the Cursed Wave. Evan, Anastasia, and their Japanese friend all report back to Dasomov on what happened, but all of them feel mentally strange in an unexplainable way, as if they all had extreme headaches.

The Cursed Wave begins prowling The World, and everything becomes dark and very spooky. The entirety of The World begins playing out the words of the Epitaph of Twilight with the Cursed Wave swallowing up zone after zone.

With each news report from hackers in The World, everything is looking disastrous, Dasomov feels like the entire mission is a failure. However, a few hours in, Mikmik sends a message in chat that he has escaped from The World and is back in real life. Everyone, especially Dasomov, is super excited and thrilled to have him back. That gives Dasomov the freedom he needs to set it all straight: with a few strokes of the keyboard, he shuts down the game servers, thereby ending the disaster.

Afterwards, the hackers discuss what they learned regarding The World. The unusual data in The Field of Mourning revealed a plot by Mama to capture and kill all human beings within The World itself. There were also three other new fields revealed that had been created by CC Corp for the "heaven without humanity", accessed in the area " **Θ** Heavenly Hearth Signet": Tumultuous Towering Tree (accessed by Heavenly Heroic Vine) - Location of the World Tree (Norse mythology), Infinite Caustic Ocean (accessed by Heavenly Caustic Ocean), and Observerless Rainbow Vista (accessed by Heavenly Rainbow Vista) - Meant to celebrate the elimination of humanity.

Having completed their objectives, Dasomov believes it would be best to wait a long time for Zontna (Yegor), Kreigbrot, and Fusota-ri to finish their analysis of the PNAK system before moving forward. Everyone else has to either learn to work with the German and Japanese in the game or leave the project out of boredom.

Yegor, however, decides to take the job in the United States (California), thereby delaying any progress. While he eventually returns for .hack/Fork: Aura Nexus Chronicles (a story I have an outline and good ideas for but probably will never write), his departure sets the timetables back and kills any hope of making the project go public in the near future.

Xil-Sta gets into a brief quarrel with Jyos about the game backstory, but it ends quick because the game project isn't going to go public.

q5corbo and Mikmik decide to meet in real life, and the optimistic personality of the guy behind q5corbo turns out to be just the right therapy the guy behind Mikmik needs to help psychologically after having been trapped in the game for so long.

Anastasia (Tovia/Taha) meets Evan (Jyos) in real life, and the two of them hit it off well. Naturally, they are relatively close in age, and Evan is interested in dating her (but nervous about asking). However, the big surprise comes when Anastasia introduces Evan to her uncle Dasomov.

Dasomov reveals how he obtained a unique copy of the game The World. He had been trying to date a Korean woman, but his Korean was terrible, so he began taking lessons from some Korean guy in IT (info-tech) who was doing it as language exchange (since the Korean guy was learning Russian). The two guys hit it off as good friends and stayed in touch even after Dasomov's relationship with the Korean woman ended. Some time later, the Korean guy lost his job because of company mismanagement. He was so ticked off, he gave Dasomov the info needed to hack into the servers of the company and told him to sabotage the company on his behalf. Dasomov did some exploring of the company servers first and realized they were holding the backups of the game The World. These backups had been forgotten by CC Corp and were sitting in the old files of the Korean company who just hadn't deleted them yet. Dasomov then set up a hack job to copy the files, and from there the game began.

In the end, Dasomov and Evan enjoy each other's company. Dasomov sees some real gargoyles and starts to think that maybe real life isn't as ugly as it seemed, and that maybe he can have good friends in real life after all. Deleting the game from his computer, he looks at his walls and decides its time to repair his REAL life. Evan and Anastasia are waiting for him, and he goes with them out to eat.

Other notes:

The offer of money to Dasomov at the end of chapter 17 is unethical because it's tax-free/evasion - i.e. the executives aren't telling the government they are giving the extra money to Dasomov.

The gamers do have access to the built-in admin panels, as chapter 8 attests, but these aren't comprehensive. Kellei notes Knut was able to load Mobashem with his own panel.


	55. Servers and Fields

Servers and Fields in the .hack/Fork version of The World, mod version 3.95 plus additions added by the hackers.

Symbols of servers:  
α - alpha  
τ - tau  
ζ - zeta  
ω/ Θ - omega  
μ - mu

Technically, any field can be created/found by combining keywords. However, some fields are specifically designed by the team and have their own names depending on the game story.

α Server Part A keywords:  
\- Chosen  
\- Floating  
\- Glorious  
\- Migrating  
\- Persnickety  
\- Prideful  
\- Radiant  
\- Triumphant

α Server Part B keywords:  
\- Banner  
\- Blessings  
\- Callous  
\- Coated  
\- Grand  
\- Healing  
\- Hybrid  
\- Narrow  
\- Reborn  
\- Triggered

α Server Part C keywords:  
\- Brook  
\- Colony  
\- Crest  
\- Culvert  
\- Gate  
\- Retribution  
\- Salamander  
\- Under Seige  
\- Ziggarat  
\- Zenith

τ Server Part A keywords:  
\- Childish  
\- Enchanted  
\- Fearless  
\- Flippant  
\- Gigantic  
\- Nocturnal  
\- Noxious  
\- Parched  
\- Torn  
\- Wintry

τ Server Part B keywords:  
\- Harper  
\- Hopeful  
\- Lantern  
\- Literate  
\- Marching  
\- Misty  
\- Shallow  
\- Spell  
\- Wanderer's

τ Server Part C keywords:  
\- Bog  
\- Caravan  
\- Catacombs  
\- Fallen  
\- Hollow  
\- Library  
\- Orchid Nectar  
\- Pattern  
\- Route  
\- Ruins  
\- Tribute  
\- Wind

ζ Server Part A keywords:  
\- Confiscated  
\- Confused  
\- False  
\- Indigenous  
\- Mindful  
\- Morphing  
\- True  
\- Utopian

ζ Server Part B keywords:  
\- Friendly  
\- Laughing  
\- Mended  
\- Rambling  
\- Scathed  
\- Terra  
\- Tongue

ζ Server Part C keywords:  
\- Arc  
\- Bewilderment  
\- Errand  
\- Paragraph  
\- Passage  
\- Ridicule  
\- Translation  
\- Critical

With the exception of root towns, a field may be the parent field of a "theme". This means there are other fields that may be accessible with similar keywords or possess the same fundamental design theme and/or may even allow the player to access the theme's parent. Related fields are listed below the parent of the theme.  
The following areas are created by The World Neuvo team and are thus not part of the original game:

α Notre Borealis (Root Town) (meaning "Our" + "Northern Wind", "Our Northern Wind")

α Radiant Reborn Zenith  
field: Radiant Banner Under Seige

α Glorious Grand Gate (alternatively Magnificent Grand Gate) (Created to celebrate the public release of The World Neuvo)  
field: Glorious Hybrid Colony (modified to fit theme)  
field: Migrating Blessings Brook (fondly called Vladmir's Vodka Volga as it was designed by a Vladmir)  
field: Truimphant Reborn Crest

α Chosen Bandit Homeland  
field: Persnickety Callous Ziggarat  
field: Persnickety Coated Salamander (modified to fit theme)  
field: Prideful Triggered Culvert  
field: Floating Narrow Retribution

α Staged Crystalline Pasttime

example field names:  
α Radiant Crystalline Ziggarat  
α Persnickety Crystalline Retribution  
α Radiant Narrow Pasttime  
α Glorious Hybrid Culvert

τ Novgorod (Root Town) (from Russian Folktales - The Sea Kings Daughter)

τ Childish Harper Wind

τ Enchanted Farmland Hollow  
field: Flippant Wanderer's Bog  
field: Flippant Spell Catacombs (modified to fit theme)  
field: Noxious Misty Library  
field: Arctic Hopeful Meadow (reached by Wintry Hopeful Bog)

ζ Parched Shallow Caravan  
field: Trail of the Scabbards (accessed by Parched Lantern Tribute)  
field: Lost Sprite's Gold (accessed by Parched Wanderer's Pattern)

τ Gigantic Literate Ruins

τ Fearless Marching Fallen

ζ Bjarma Cockaigne (Root Town) (server added later)

τ Torn Swallowing Implication  
field: Morphing Terra Translation  
field: Confused Friendly Paragraph  
field: Confiscated Tongue Passage  
field: Mindful Laughing Arc  
field: Indigenous Mended Ridicule

ζ False Arch Bewilderment  
field: Cold-hearted Fool's Errand (accessed by False Friendly Errand)

ζ Fragmented Rambling Critical

ζ Utopian Scathed Route

ζ Bu Reilov: Source of Apeiron's Power (accessed by True Mended Critical) (part of the backstory for The World Neuvo)

example field names:  
ζ Utopian Terra Bewilderment

Test server zones:

μ Test Server (later renamed Helpful Pickled Risings)  
field: Test Phase Bolgograd (later renamed Moon Launch Platform)  
field: Test Phase Miraknograd (later renamed Mechanical Treasure Testsite)  
field: Capture Zone Wiessa (later renamed Rogue Mutant Net)

Discovered as being hidden in The World:

Θ Heavenly Hearth Signet  
field: Tumultuous Towering Tree (accessed by Heavenly Heroic Vine) - Location of the World Tree (Norse mythology).  
field: Infinite Caustic Ocean (accessed by Heavenly Caustic Ocean)  
field: Observerless Rainbow Vista (accessed by Heavenly Rainbow Vista) - Meant to celebrate the elimination of humanity.

Θ Tidal Elimination Scorn - The World's "hell"  
field: Cursed Wave's Nest (accessed by Tidal Curses Homeland)  
field: Keyless Doorless Underground (accessed by Tidal Entrance Caverns)  
field: Fearfully Banished Soul (accessed by Tidal Spirit Prison)

Θ Cursed Traveler's End  
field: Fleeing Spirit's Turmoil (accessed by Cursed Fearful Pain)  
field: Graveyard Of Twilight (accessed by Cursed Twilight Graveyard) (Location of the Monument of Twilight / Epitaph Stone) 


End file.
